Streetwise — Chapter 25: Just a Few More Calamities

1. 1. Rajat Gupta, a McKinsey senior partner and Goldman board member, was convicted of insider trading for tipping Raj Rajaratnam about Goldman's confidential information, including Warren Buffett's 2008 investment.
2. 2. Goldman Sachs was often blamed in media coverage of the Gupta scandal, despite being a victim, because stories mentioning Goldman attracted more clicks.
3. 3. Occupy Wall Street was a small protest with never more than a couple of hundred occupiers, but received disproportionate media coverage due to social media and the press's hunger for a left-wing counterpart to the Tea Party.
4. 4. Goldman hired Jake Siewert as head of corporate communications in 2012 to improve press relations, but on his first day a New York Times op-ed by Greg Smith accused the firm of betraying its culture.
5. 5. Goldman Sachs was implicated in the 1MDB scandal, where Malaysian officials and Goldman employees Jho Low, Tim Leissner, and Roger Ng siphoned $4.5 billion from a sovereign wealth fund.
6. 6. Blankfein argues that CEOs should only take public stands on political issues when they fall within the company's expertise or directly affect employees, citing marriage equality as a legitimate case.