Lloyd Blankfein

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Lloyd Blankfein : biography

September 20, 1954 –

Lloyd Craig Blankfein (born September 20, 1954) is an American business executive. He is the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs. He has been in this position since the May 31, 2006 nomination of former CEO Henry Paulson as United States Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush.

Politics

Blankfein is a contributor to mostly Democratic party candidates and donated $4,600 to Democratic Party candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2007. Goldman employees and their relatives contributed almost a million dollars to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign — making it "the company from which Obama raised the most money in 2008" — and Blankfein has visited the White House 14 times as of January 2013.Washington Free Beacon (January 3, 2013) , Washington Free Beacon Former Goldman executives who hold senior positions in the Obama administration include Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Robert Hormats, the undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs.Greg Gordon April 21, 2010 McClatchy Newspapers. With regard to his personal political views, Blankfein has described himself as "a registered Democrat, and a Rockefeller Republican … conservative on fiscal issues and more liberal on social issues".

On April 7, 2009, Blankfein recommended guidelines to overhaul executive compensation. According to The New York Times, he said that lessons from the global financial crisis included the need to "apply basic standards to how we compensate people in our industry."

In November 2009, he declared in an interview, as a banker: "I’m doing God’s work." Several days later he indicated that he regretted that remark and said he had intended it as a joke. He also apologized on behalf of Goldman Sachs to the public for unspecified "things that were clearly wrong and have reason to regret" and which contributed to the financial and economic crisis. The firm announced a 10,000 Small Businesses initiative, committing $500 million to aid American small businesses., The Financial Times, November 18, 2009.

On July 18, 2012, Blankfein commented about the effect of the Libor scandal on the financial system, “There was this huge hole to dig out of in terms of getting trust back and now it’s just that much deeper.” The same day he met Jack Lew, President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, and over lunch at the Economic Club of Washington was asked whether he had any aspiration to go into government like predecessors Hank Paulson and Robert Rubin. “I have aspirations to be desired,” he replied.

Goldman CEO

Blankfein earned a total of $54.4 million in 2006 as one of the highest paid executives on Wall Street. His bonus reflected the performance of Goldman Sachs, which reported record net earnings of $9.5 billion. The compensation included a cash bonus of $27.3 million, with the rest paid in stock and options. While CEO of Goldman Sachs Group in 2007, Blankfein earned a total compensation of $53,965,418, which included a base salary of $600,000, a cash bonus of $26,985,474, stocks granted of $15,542,756 and options granted of $10,453,031., Equilar.com

Blankfein was named as one of "The Most Outrageous CEOs of 2009" by Forbes magazine.Coster, Helen . Forbes. Retrieved December 25, 2009. Taking a different position, Financial Times, which named Blankfein as its "2009 Person of the Year", stated, "His bank has stuck to its strengths, unashamedly taken advantage of the low interest rates and diminished competition resulting from the crisis to make big trading profits."Gapper, John Financial Times. Retrieved December 25, 2009. Critics of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street have taken issue with those practices.. The Huffington Post. Retrieved December 25, 2009.

On January 13, 2010, Blankfein testified before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, that he considered Goldman Sachs’s role as primarily a market maker, not a creator of the product (i.e., subprime mortgage-related securities). Goldman Sachs was sued on April 16, 2010, by the SEC for the fraudulent selling of a synthetic CDO tied to subprime mortgages, a product which Goldman Sachs had created.