Goldman Sachs wants to hire a particular sort of investment banking MD this summer

Even if you're Goldman Sachs it seems that you can't attract senior talent as if by magic. - Simply declaring a hiring intention is not enough. Nor is sprinkling your website with advertisements for senior roles. Managing directors are just not that easy to come by...

This, at least, is the implication of Goldman's ongoing request for senior applicants for its brand new 'cross markets group' which covers clients in all industries and is focused on mid-market deals worth between $500m and $2bn.

The new group first saw the light of day in early May 2019 amidst reports that it would be hiring up to 20 people. It's led globally by investment bank COO Will Bousquette and in Europe by Rob Pulford, head of the financial and strategic investors group (which advises sovereign wealth funds and private equity funds).

One month later and Goldman is heavily broadcasting the new vacancies. The CMG Group still needs four analysts, four associates, and - most notably - four managing directors or VPs - with one of each category in London, Paris, Frankfurt and New York. The equal weighting suggests the new group will be unusually top heavy (a bit like Deutsche Bank), although maybe Goldman needs some MDs to originate its CMG deals before it hires analysts and associates to execute them.

What's notable, though, is that Goldman is even advertising MD roles at all. Not long ago, the firm was known for growing almost all its senior talent in-house. Now, it's not only hiring externally but is opening its roles for all takers - and has seemingly not been inundated with applicants given that some of its adverts have been running for over a month. 

Goldman's newest MDs may turn up at the end of this summer. The cross markets groups' mid-market focus could mean they're drawn from places like the Big Four, which traditionally focus on smaller deals. Given that Goldman wants generalists, it might be that the CMG MDs are hard to find.

In the adverts for the new roles, Goldman says the new hires will, "cover clients across all industries and provide M&A, financing and other corporate finance solutions utilizing dedicated resources from within the Cross Markets Group team of investment bankers." The implication is that the new staff will need to be all-singing and all-dancing and won't be able to push work onto the firm's existing specialist sector teams.

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