Goldman Sachs has made some major changes to its strats team

Now that Guy Saidenberg, the London-based global head of Goldman Sachs’ sales strats and structuring team, has retired, it’s all change in the division.

Goldman Sachs has been making some significant changes within its strats sales team to reorganise the division after Saidenberg’s departure and Elisha Wiesel's elevation to chief information officer. For a start, according to sources close to the situation, Chris Milner, a partner and head of its fixed income currencies and commodities sales strats team, has departed.

Meanwhile, Ezra Nahum, who is currently a partner global head of fixed income currencies and commodities strats, has been handed more responsibility. He is now in charge of sales strats for FICC globally and will report directly into Isabelle Ealet, Pablo Salame and Ashok Varadhan, co-heads of Goldman's securities division, as well as Wiesel.

Thalia Chryssikou, a London-based partner and head of EMEA interest rates sales, and Stefan Bollinger, a partner who was most recently co-head of EMEA equities sales are two of the other big winners. They have become co-head of global sales strats, with Chryssikou focused on FICC and Bollinger taking responsibility for equities.

Chryssikou has been with Goldman Sachs for her entire investment banking career. She joined in 1998 after graduating with a PhD in operations research from MIT. Before her recent promotion, she was head of EMEA interest rate, currency and emerging market strategies in London.

In her new role, she reports to Wiesel as well as Michael Daffey and Paul Russo, global co-chief operating officers of equities.

Bollinger was previously based in Hong Kong, where he was head of Asia-Pacific ex-Japan corporate sales, but is currently in London. He has been at Goldman Sachs since 2004, when he joined from J.P. Morgan where he worked within its corporate solutions and financial institutions derivatives marketing group. He was promoted to partner in 2010. In his new role, Bollinger reports to Jim Esposito, chief strategy officer of the securities division and co-head of global FICC sales, its recently-installed global co-head of fixed income, commodities and currencies sales, John Willian, and Nahum.

The memo announcing Saidenberg’s retirement said that he had “mentored and recruited” many of Goldman’s traders in equities, FX, commodities and emerging markets. But now it’s becoming apparent just how much of a lynchpin to Goldman’s strats team he was.

Not only did he have responsibility for sales strats within Goldman, but Saidenberg also helped to “evolve the Securities Division’s digital strategy to improve our workflow and delivery to clients”. This means that he oversaw big technology products like Marquee, Goldman's internal software platform that allows Goldman to interact with clients directly.

Now, however, the digital responsibilities fall under the remit of New York-based Adam Korn, who is currently global head of the equities franchise trading and securities services strats team. This means that Korn now oversees internal projects like Marquee, but also external digital initiatives that Goldman’s principal strategic investments (PSI) group decides to commit money to. An example of the tech companies that PSI has invested in includes Goldman’s investment in financial messaging ‘Bloomberg killer’ Symphony.

Darren Cohen, global head of Principal Strategic Investments (PSI) and chief operating officer of the Digital Strategy Group (DSG), now reports into Korn.

Korn joined Goldman Sachs as an associate in 2002 within its equity derivatives research group. Before this, he worked as CFO at tech start-up Zebware, which he co-founded. He was promoted to managing director after just six years at the firm and made partner in 2010.

Saidenberg was something of a prodigy at Goldman Sachs and moved up the ranks rapidly. He joined as an associate on the London rates desk in 1999, but became an MD after just five years at the bank. He left Goldman Sachs in February after 18 years at the firm.

Contact: pclarke@efinancialcareers.com

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