Goldman Sachs Weighs Waldron as Next CEO

In January 2025 the board of Goldman Sachs awarded David Solomon and John Waldron retention bonuses of $80 million each in restricted stock. That same period the board added Waldron as a director, a step that reinforced his standing as the heir apparent. On September 28, 2026, The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that the board had discussed a plan for Solomon to step down as chief executive and be replaced by Waldron, the firm’s president and chief operating officer, as soon as the next year.

Goldman Sachs’ global head of communications, Fratto, placed the firm’s response on the page in full: “Of course the board regularly discusses succession, as we disclose in our filings, but there is no definitive timeline for succession at Goldman Sachs. Any assertions about timing are just speculation.” The statement did not deny that succession belonged on the board’s agenda. It rejected only the idea of a fixed clock. The Journal’s account had attached a public name to the talks, and the name was Waldron’s.

David Solomon is 64. He has been chief executive since October 2018 and chairman of the board since January 2019. Before the top job he served as president and chief operating officer from January 2017 through September 2018. John Waldron is 57. In October 2018, the same month Solomon became CEO, Waldron was named president and chief operating officer. The two men have held those paired seats for the full length of Solomon’s tenure. Waldron oversees the leaders of the bank’s main divisions.

Waldron has long been seen as Solomon’s successor. Sources familiar with the matter have said previously that he was expected to take over the reins. Analyst Mike Mayo told Reuters that the succession at Goldman Sachs has been “unusually telegraphed.” The board’s decision to place Waldron among its directors made the next name visible well before any formal handoff was set.

Discussions have centered on a handoff around the end of 2027 or in 2028. Under the plan Solomon would step down as chief executive and Waldron would replace him. Solomon would remain executive chairman for one to two years after leaving the CEO role. The proposal would still require formal board approval. That approval could come in the coming months, though the timing could change.

Both men had worked at Bear Stearns. Solomon left that firm for Goldman Sachs in 1999. Waldron made the same move a year later, joining in 2000. The consecutive arrivals from one earlier bank became the shared root of the partnership that has sat at the top of Goldman ever since. Waldron’s climb ran through investment banking. He served as co-head of leveraged finance and as global co-head of the financial sponsors group. In 2014 he became co-head of investment banking, the role he held until he moved onto Solomon’s leadership team. Other firms tried to pull him out of that track. Waldron received outside recruitment interest, including from Apollo Global Management.

Mike Mayo described what the parallel work had produced. “They have been driving Goldman’s priorities together,” he said.

Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869 and is headquartered in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Manhattan. It is one of the largest investment banks by revenue and is considered a systemically important financial institution by the Financial Stability Board.

CEO succession has become a key focus for investors across Wall Street. At JPMorgan Chase, attention has centered on when Jamie Dimon may step aside. Investors have also monitored leadership planning at Bank of America under Brian Moynihan, one of the longest-serving chiefs among major U.S. banks. JPMorgan has already moved on its own next tier, placing Doug Petno and Troy Rohrbaugh in the frame of that planning. Shareholders want boards to show a named successor and a workable path well before any vacancy forces the choice. At Goldman the question is shifting from who comes next to how the seats around the current chief operating officer are already being rearranged.

Over the past year Goldman Sachs has shifted some of John Waldron’s chief operating officer duties to Denis Coleman, the firm’s chief financial officer. Two portfolios moved with the change. The first is internal personnel management, the work of handling the firm’s own people from inside the bank. The second is One GS 3.0, Goldman’s artificial intelligence overhaul of internal operations, a program that applies AI to redesign the systems and workflows the bank uses to run itself rather than products sold to clients. Coleman now carries pieces of the operational load that had sat with the president and chief operating officer. Internal personnel management reports in part through the chief financial officer. The One GS 3.0 AI overhaul reports there as well.