Meet Russell Horwitz, the ex-Goldman partner who is stepping in as David Solomon’s chief of staff at a vulnerable time for the CEO

• Russell Horwitz has been named David Solomon’s new chief of staff at a difficult time for the CEO.
• Horwitz will replace Goldman legend John F. W. Rogers, who will continue to advise the board.
• Here’s everything we know about Horwitz and why he returned to Goldman Sachs.

The steady drumbeat of executive departures at Goldman Sachs has changed tune.

Russell Horwitz, a former chief of staff to CEO Lloyd Blankfein, is returning to the firm after a two-year absence. Horwitz will take on a new role as chief of staff to CEO David Solomon, who has come under fire for his leadership as he attempts to reshape the bank.

Horwitz will succeed longtime Goldman Sachs executive John Rogers, who has had the CEO and board’s ear since Jon Corzine hired him in 1994.

According to people familiar with the plans, Rogers, who is both feared and revered within Goldman, will remain as executive vice president and secretary to the board of directors. Rogers, who previously worked for US Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, will also continue to serve on Goldman’s powerful management committee.

The New York Times broke the news first, stating that Rogers has no plans to leave the firm “anytime soon.” However, rumors of his retirement have circulated within Goldman’s halls for months, according to two people with knowledge of them. Rogers, who has advised four Goldman CEOs over the last 30 years, will also see the end of an era.

Rogers’ influence has dwindled in recent years. When Solomon and his deputy, John Waldron, hired Fiona Carter from AT&T to be Goldman’s first chief marketing officer in 2020, Rogers’ oversight of the marketing and content functions was removed. Carter quickly centralized marketing functions and assembled a large team.

Dina Powell McCormick, long considered a logical replacement for Rogers, recently left the firm to become vice chairman at BDT & MSD Partners, the boutique merchant bank run by former Goldman bankers Gregg Lemkau and Byron Trott. Another, Jake Siewert, left Goldman in June 2021 to join Warburg Pincus.

What does Horwitz’s return mean for Goldman Sachs, and especially for Solomon?

He was hand-picked by Solomon after being recommended by Rogers, according to Horwitz, implying he has the full support of both the CEO and his former chief-of-staff.

Insiders say he is also a loyalist to Solomon’s predecessor, Lloyd Blankfein, who allegedly “groused” about Solomon with other Goldman partners at this year’s partners’ meeting in Miami.Under the C-suite, partners are the firm’s highest-level executives. Solomon has been under pressure to appease some of them about his money-losing venture into consumer banking.

Whatever the transition brings, it will undoubtedly be closely monitored. Everything we know about Solomon’s new chief of staff is listed below.

He’s seen as a Blankfein loyalist

Horwitz is an unusual choice in some ways. He is regarded as a Blankfein supporter who is deeply concerned about the culture of a firm that many partners and ex-partners believe is heading in the wrong direction.

In other ways, it makes perfect sense. Rogers assigned Horwitz to handle the day-to-day tasks of negotiating Goldman’s settlement over the 1MDB scandal, implying that he was trusted to handle the most difficult of situations.

Horwitz’s role now will be to assist Solomon in regaining the trust of the partners and reclaiming some of the narrative surrounding the losing consumer business and a string of partner exits.

This was a long-time coming

According to sources familiar with the situation, Horwitz has been proposed as a replacement for Rogers before. According to these sources, Horwitz and two other partners in the firm’s communications and government relations department pushed to take on some of Rogers’ responsibilities several years ago.

Goldman’s president, John Waldron, was eventually brought into the conversation, but he left the decision to Rogers, who refused to relinquish any of his responsibilities. Horwitz quickly left.

The talks started in June

Horwitz declined to comment on those earlier discussions, but he did say Rogers started the most recent one and quickly started the process of reintegrating Horwitz.

Horwitz claims that the plan has been in the works since June, when he left Citadel to work for billionaire Ken Griffin.

“John and I first talked about the possibility of me coming back in June,” Horwitz said, referring to Rogers. “He made a recommendation to David and John, and I spent a lot of time with them over the summer.”

When Horwitz told Citadel executives about his plans to rejoin Goldman, one of them told him that his heart had always been in that place, referring to Goldman.

He most recently worked at Citadel

Horwitz joined Citadel as chief global affairs officer in 2021, as part of a larger flow of Goldman executives to large, multi-strategy hedge funds.

As previously reported by Insider, many of Citadel’s nearly 20 senior executives came from Goldman, including co-CIO Pablo Salame, who ran global markets at the investment bank, and CTO Umesh Subramanian.

“I had accomplished what I wanted there,” Horwitz said of his time at Citadel. I am a public company creature; that is where my skill set is best applied, and there aren’t many companies in the world that are more complex or interesting than Goldman.”

He has Washington experience

Horwitz, like Rogers, has worked in Washington, DC. He worked for the Securities and Exchange Commission under chairman Arthur Levitt before joining Goldman in 2004. He also worked for the Clinton administration.

Horwitz was promoted from co-COO of Goldman’s trading division to deputy chief of staff and secretary to the firm’s management committee in 2017, a powerful body of senior executives in charge of firmwide strategy, policy, and management decisions. In that capacity, he collaborated closely with Rogers.

“He’s had an enormous influence on my career, and it’s both exciting and daunting to take on responsibilities that he has set the standard for,” Horwitz said of Rogers.

He became a partner at Goldman Sachs in 2012 and will return to the firm with that title.