David Solomon

And it's an incredible organization that I feel fortunate to steward.

I applied the first time when I was graduating from Hamilton College, and I got a very quick letter back, no thank you, but I got a lot of those.

I mean, I think I remember I got, back in the early 1980s when you applied for jobs, you wrote formal letters, sent your resume, applied for a job, you got a rejection letter back.

I got a lot of those.

I was very fortunate to get a job at the Irving Trust Company in a credit training program in 1984, and that kind of set me down in this path.

I was very lucky to be recruited to join Goldman Sachs in 1999.

I really thought it was an opportunity to work for the best financial firm in the world.

I think I've worked very hard over a long period of time.

But the real reason that I'm sitting in the seat is a confluence of things, a big portion of which is just luck and serendipity.

I mean, one of the things you might have heard me say before is.

You know, if the leadership of the firm had transitioned at a different time, I wouldn't be running the firm.

I mean, one of the things, you know, I can point to Lloyd Blankfein.

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,