David Solomon

I mean, this is well known.

You know, Lloyd Blankfein had cancer in 2015 and he stepped back, you know, to deal with his treatments.

for a period of time.

He chose to step back but to stay at the firm.

Someone else might have decided, you know what, I have to deal with this and I'm gonna step away.

If Lloyd had stepped away in 2015, someone else, probably Gary Cohn, probably would be running the firm.

It wouldn't be me.

And so the fact that the transition occurred in 2018, I happened to be one of the right people at that moment, at that time, in the right place,

But if it had been 2012, if it had been 2015, by the way, if it had been 2022, I mean, it wouldn't have been me either.

So it's you know, these things are a journey of hard work.

There are lots of people at Goldman Sachs that are capable of running the firm.

And then it's a confluence of, you know, luck and timing that goes with the hard work that that allowed me to wind up in the seat.

But I'm I'm very cognizant of the fact that a lot of it is luck and serendipity.

You know, I think the thing you learn as you go through life is that, you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint.

It's never a straight line.

Lots of things you're going to get knocked down and, you know, bumped around.

And at the end of the day, there are certain things that I think are true north.

For me, True North has always been first and foremost, my family, my two daughters, you know, true, true North, always.

It's always been, I can't say that I always got the balance perfectly right, you know, every step of the way, every day, but it's always been True North.

And, you know, after that, my friends, I'm very blessed to have an extraordinary group of friends, many of whom I've been friendly with, you know, for, you know, 25, 35, 45, 50 years or more.