周三（3月14日）纽约时报刊登了高盛驻伦敦的执行董事Greg Smith 1270个字的辞职信，作为内幕管理层人士高调谴责拥有143年悠久历史的华尔街顶尖投行高盛“没有道德、没有诚信、没有未来”；说目前高盛的工作环境是他工作12年来“见过的最有毒和最具破坏性的”；说公司高管在内部的会议和邮件中常称客户为任由他们摆布的提线木偶（muppets）；说为自己公司赚钱盈利而非考虑客户的利益是这百年老店如今衡量管理层和员工价值的唯一标准；说自己再也不能对着大学刚毕业新员工们的眼睛说这是一个让自己自豪的公司了，于是知道是时候该辞职了。。。

投行天天辞职的人多了，但像Greg这样通过媒体高调辞职的方式还是首次。这一封信让高盛的股票当天就跌了3.4%，市值缩水近20亿美金。他在辞职信中矛头直指的高盛首席执行官Lloyd Blankfein和总裁Gary Cohn当天立即向员工发了一份备忘录，称对其“作出的论断感到失望，这样的论断不能反映我们的价值观、我们的文化或是高盛绝大多数员工对本公司以及公司为客户所做工作的看法。” 并称：“在我们这样规模的公司中，有人可能感到不满，这并不奇怪。但这并不代表，也不应该代表我们公司三万多名员工的看法。” 这一新闻周三周四在全球各大财经媒体上都占据了一席之地，到周五3月16日，Business Insider采访了高盛创始人Marcus Goldman的曾孙Henry Goldman III，他表示作为高盛家族后人，他赞同Greg 对高盛公司文化蜕变的指责，认为Greg反映了华尔街的普遍现象，不过他指出华尔街的掠夺行为并不是他最近才注意到的。Henry Goldman III的回应无疑给了高盛、给了华尔街再一次重击。

Greg Smith何许人也？33岁在南非约翰内斯堡出生、父亲是药剂师母亲是家庭主妇、从小在犹太人的私立学校读书、曾代表南非于1993年和1997年参加在以色列举办的Maccabiah Games（犹太人的奥运会）的乒乓球比赛并获得铜牌、获奖学金到美国斯坦福大学读书主修经济学、2001年大学毕业入围Rhodes 奖学金最后10位提名人（注：该奖学金每年仅提供给4位最佳毕业生去牛津进修一年，前总统Bill Clinton就曾获此奖学金）、牛津未能如愿的他走进了华尔街的高盛在纽约工作10年后到其伦敦分公司任职负责欧洲、中东和非洲区的美国金融衍生品的执行董事、曾负责客户的总资产规模达上万亿美元，其年薪约50万美金。作为财经圈的专业人士，他的简历非常出色，他的人品和职业道德操守让人敬佩。看他的照片你就知道他是那种很典型的投行人–光头大眼、目光逼人，仔细看看他和他的两位前老板高盛首席执行官Lloyd Blankfein和总裁Gary Cohn有些相似之处。其实，就他的年纪和年薪而言，他只不过是个中层管理人员；他说出来的也不过是华尔街乃至全世界金融圈子经济圈子里人所共知的事实。只是，他的辞职信没有先交给公司而是交给了有分量的媒体、他挑了一个“占领华尔街”运动后三个月的时间来辞职、他断了自己的后路来呼吁，在偌大的华尔街他就像唐吉诃德，勇气和精神让大家刮目相看。

而他的这一壮举是螳臂还是警钟，在美国还是很容易判断的，因为政府和监管机构会出手调查，客户会起诉。2010年高盛因舞弊案曾被美国证监会罚过5亿5千万美元，Greg的一封信恐怕也不是高盛总裁们几句话就能打发过去的。

如果把Greg的诚信和道德观来看看我们中国的投行、中国的企业乃至我们的国家以及管理者们，现在又有多少我们是可以看着我们孩子们那些稚嫩纯净的眼睛毫不犹豫地说我们引以为荣？有多少领导者真正诚实正直品格端正、不做作不演戏有担当？又有多少我们这些普通百姓能看得清对错、有勇气有胆量去追求自己的人格和尊严呢？或者在中国根本不可能有Greg这样的人出现、更不可能有纽约时报这样"不和谐"的报纸。

写到这里，收到朋友转来一封邮件，说是美国兰德公司亚太政策中心的一篇文章说不用美国出手10年内中国将自己走向衰落。里面详细分析了中国的法制、金融体系、商品经济模式、教育体系、家庭关系以及中国文化与人性等方面。它的结束语是“随着传统文化价值观的破化和逐步衰弱，大多数的中国人包括受过教育的人都徘徊在精神和内心世界的路口，像迷失的狗一样不知何去何从”。这句话是说得难听，有一点Greg Smith的味道。我想，对于敢于直面事实的勇士们，就算是螳臂挡车也是值得一搏的，至少搏个能对着自己孩子的眼睛说心安理得。

附Greg Smith辞职信全文如下：

NO MORALITY, NO INTEGRITY... NO FUTURE?

Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

It might sound surprising to a skeptical public, but culture was always a vital part of Goldman Sachs’s success. It revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years. It wasn’t just about making money; this alone will not sustain a firm for so long. It had something to do with pride and belief in the organization. I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

When the history books are written about Goldman Sachs, they may reflect that the current chief executive officer, Lloyd C. Blankfein, and the president, Gary D. Cohn, lost hold of the firm’s culture on their watch. I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.

Over the course of my career I have had the privilege of advising two of the largest hedge funds on the planet, five of the largest asset managers in the United States, and three of the most prominent sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. My clients have a total asset base of more than a trillion dollars. I have always taken a lot of pride in advising my clients to do what I believe is right for them, even if it means less money for the firm. This view is becoming increasingly unpopular at Goldman Sachs. Another sign that it was time to leave.

How did we get here? The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

What are three quick ways to become a leader? a) Execute on the firm’s “axes,” which is Goldman-speak for persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit. b) “Hunt Elephants.” In English: get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them. c) Find yourself sitting in a seat where your job is to trade any illiquid, opaque product with a three-letter acronym.

Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all.

It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail. Even after the S.E.C., Fabulous Fab, Abacus, God’s work, Carl Levin, Vampire Squids? No humility? I mean, come on. Integrity? It is eroding. I don’t know of any illegal behavior, but will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.

It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you. It doesn’t matter how smart you are.

These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?” It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst sitting quietly in the corner of the room hearing about “muppets,” “ripping eyeballs out” and “getting paid” doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.

When I was a first-year analyst I didn’t know where the bathroom was, or how to tie my shoelaces. I was taught to be concerned with learning the ropes, finding out what a derivative was, understanding finance, getting to know our clients and what motivated them, learning how they defined success and what we could do to help them get there.

My proudest moments in life — getting a full scholarship to go from South Africa to Stanford University, being selected as a Rhodes Scholar national finalist, winning a bronze medal for table tennis at the Maccabiah Games in Israel, known as the Jewish Olympics — have all come through hard work, with no shortcuts. Goldman Sachs today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about achievement. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

I hope this can be a wake-up call to the board of directors. Make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist. Weed out the morally bankrupt people, no matter how much money they make for the firm. And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm — or the trust of its clients — for very much longer. 

Source: The New York Times