Goldman Sachs executives partied in Las Vegas by sharing a hot tub with a topless woman they dubbed ‘Ms Silicone,’ the executive who publicly quit the firm has claimed. Greg Smith said that during a bachelor weekend with colleagues they stayed at the five star Mandalay Bay Hotel where they drank themselves senseless and gambled at [...]

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How to party like a Goldman trader

By Daniel Bates
New book reveals the bankers' lives of excess, debauchery and 'Ms Silicone'
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Goldman Sachs executives partied in Las Vegas by sharing a hot tub with a topless woman they dubbed ‘Ms Silicone,’ the executive who publicly quit the firm has claimed. Greg Smith said that during a bachelor weekend with colleagues they stayed at the five star Mandalay Bay Hotel where they drank themselves senseless and gambled at all hours.
‘Ms Silicone’ – apparently named for her large, fake breasts – accompanied them one afternoon for a soothing dip when they were all hungover from a heavy session in the casino.

Mr Smith also recalls one co-worker who was so arrogant about money that he gave him $1,000 in casino chips he had just won and said: ‘That’s what it’s like. Enjoy the weekend.’ The details are in Mr Smith’s book, Why I Left Goldman Sachs, which is not just exposing the ‘toxic’ culture at the bank, but the excess that comes with it.

It will also raise questions over his integrity as he freely admits feeling ‘screwed’ because his bonus on year was a mere $500,000 on top of a $200,000 salary.

Until now Mr Smith has painted himself as a principled man who quit because he could not stomach what he was seeing – but now appears to have bought into the Goldman mentality in the beginning as much as the others. Mr Smith resigned in March in a resignation letter which was published in the New York Times and made the explosive claims that senior staff called their clients ‘muppets.’

The publication of his book has long threatened to lift the lid on a culture of bullying and greed at Goldman Sachs – and now it appears to be delivering.

He writes: ‘Alcohol was a big part of the culture at the firm, as it is on Wall Street in general. Getting smashed with your clients was a regular occurrence.’ The book details how in 2005 he went on the bachelor weekend with a managing director called Bill-Jo who was playing Blackjack with $500 chips.

Mr Smith writes: ‘He drew a seven of clubs. The dealer pushed back Bill-Jo’s $500 chip with another one sitting on top.
‘Bill-Jo took both chips and put them into my hand. “That’s what it’s like,” he said. “Enjoy the weekend.”‘
The following afternoon the group were all hungover so they partied in the hot tub at the Mandalay Bay – with the topless woman they called ‘Ms Silicone.’ Mr Smith also talks about a party put on for the securities division at Chelsea Piers in New York which took place in December 2006.

Clearly stunned even now, he writes that it was ‘an unbelievably ostentatious affair.’The book says: ‘There must have been 3,000 people in attendance, and nearly as many ice sculptures… All you could do was eat, get hammered, and gape at the sheer spectacle of the thing.’ Mr Smith opens up about about Bonus Day which happened the same month which he claimed ‘determined a person’s entire self-worth.’

But when it came to his turn, Mr Smith was disappointed that he only got $500,000 for his work.He said: ‘By the logic of the outside world, I was being absurdly well-compensated for work whose chief benefit was to maintain the robustness of the world’s capital markets.

‘By any measure, I should have felt exceptionally lucky and grateful. But by the warped logic of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street, I was being screwed.’

According to Politico, which obtained a copy of Mr Smith’s book, the word ‘muppet’ was more widely used than had been thought.
Mr Smith writes: ‘Being a muppet meant being an idiot, a fool, manipulated by someone else.

‘Within days of arriving in London, I was shocked at how many times I heard people – both very senior and very junior, refer to their clients as muppets.

‘Clients were labeled muppets when they didn’t understand a complex markets concept or if they had trouble comprehending options pricing theory. Once a client was called a muppet who had no f****** clue what he was doing.’
The first chapter of the book has already been leaked online and given similar eyebrow-raising insights.
Titled ‘I Don’t Know, But I’ll Find Out,’ it details how, fresh out of university, a 21-year-old Mr Smith arrived at Goldman Sachs’ New York offices on a warm day in June 2000 to begin his summer internship.

He writes that interns had to carry around folding stools ‘at all times because there were no extra chairs at the trading desk’ and attend pre-dawn ‘boot camp’ grillings.

He recalls how one vice-president ridiculed an intern who did not know enough about Goldman Sachs’ stance on Microsoft shares. The trainee promptly burst into tears and ran out of the room.

Mr Smith received a $1.5million advance payment for his book.In his time at Goldman on to become an executive director and head of the company’s U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle-East and Africa.

But in the resignation letter he said the firm’s culture had changed from one that ‘revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility and always doing right by our clients’ to one where mistreating clients for profit had become standard, creating a ‘toxic and destructive’ environment.

© Daily Mail, London




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