David Solomon

I appreciate the question, and it's certainly fair to say that there are lots of days where I've woken up and said, how did I get here?

I certainly saw myself as a very unlikely candidate to steward this firm.

And I think I use the word steward because I think it's an important word.

The firm's been around for over 155 years.

I've been running it for, I'm in my eighth year, but I'm a steward of a great institution, and my job is to do everything I can

with the broad leadership team to leave this organization stronger than we found it as a leadership team so the next leaders can steward it, you know, further along.

And there aren't a lot of organizations, you know, that make it under one name, you know, for 150, you know, plus years.

And so that's a tremendous responsibility.

I would say these jobs are not easy.

I think anyone that winds up in one of these jobs has certain skills and preparation the day they get the job, but they continue to grow and have more skills and better preparation as they go through the fire and, you know, and make mistakes and, and, you know, turn left when they should turn right and, you know, jump up when they should sit down.

I mean, it's, you know, you're learning every day and I certainly feel much better equipped to, to,

you know, to handle some of the responsibilities today than I did eight years ago.

But that's, you know, that's true, I think, with anybody that steps into one of these jobs.

You try to surround yourself with great people.

You try to listen.

I'm blessed to have an extraordinary team at Goldman Sachs, an extraordinary leadership team that's been incredibly stable over the course of the last five, six years.

We work together to steward the firm and

We try to be as nimble and as flexible to adapt to what the world throws at you.

I think one of the things I'd also highlight that's changed over the last 10, 15 years, the visibility of these jobs is very different than it was 15, 20 years ago in terms of the transparency in everything you say, everything you do, the scrutiny.

It's a different standard.