Even as the bank's chief economist warns that the post-COVID flight from global urban centers will continue for years, Goldman Sachs is reportedly planning on summoning its employees back to the office before the summer.
To be sure, this isn't exactly a surprise. Like its much-larger rival JPM, Goldman moved to start bringing traders and investment bankers back to the office last year, leading to some headline-grabbing trading-floor COVID outbreaks.
According to Reuters, Goldman CEO David Solomon informed staff during an all-hands Zoom call on Friday that the bank's thousands of workers, who have mostly been working from home, will be back in offices by the summer. The NYC-based investment bank has nearly 40K employees around the world and its push to return to offices has been gaining steam internationally. Many of the bank's roughly 10K workers in India are already returning to offices in Bengaluru and Mumbai from the hometowns where they spent the pandemic. In London, traders, investment bankers and others can get tested for COVID-19 in booths scattered around the building.
Solomon explained that the bank owes it to its incoming class of analysts and interns to have them come to work in offices, even if only for part of the summer period, alongside other bank staff. Because how else can they be expected to learn the business without the kind of hands-on learning afforded to all prior generations of bank workers.
"Getting them in to the office is best way to get them connected to Goldman Sachs," Solomon said during the meeting, which was transcribed and shared with Reuters. "We understand that until more of us are vaccinated that is...