A Goldman Sachs executive considered a potential candidate to succeed CEO Lloyd Blankfein on Monday said he was retiring from the firm.

Michael Sherwood, a vice chairman and co-CEO of Goldman Sachs International, decided to retire after 30 years at the firm, according to an internal memo.

In case his departure raises any questions about who might eventually take the reins after Blankfein, who is 62 and says he has no plans to retire, we have put together a list of the key executives at the firm.

These are the key people behind the big three at Goldman: Blankfein, CFO Harvey Schwartz, and president Gary Cohn.

They come from across the firm — banking, sales and trading, investment management, and even technology. They've worked around the world and now are based mostly in New York and London.

Check out Goldman Sachs' top power players, listed below in alphabetical order.

SEE ALSO: One of Goldman Sachs' most senior executives is leaving the firm

R. Martin Chavez — Chief information officer

Chavez is the person tasked with leading Goldman Sachs' technology efforts, and he led the development of the firm's own programming language for risk calculations.

He also breaks the mold of a typical Wall Street executive. A onetime tech startup founder, he is part of a small group of senior Latino executives at Goldman; just 3.5% of the firm's senior officials and managers identify as Hispanic or Latino.

When he joined the bank in 1993, he was one of its first openly gay employees. He sports a sleeve of tattoos.

Edith Cooper — Global head of human capital management

Cooper is one of only two women on the list, and she is arguably one of the highest-profile women on Wall Street.

Before taking over human capital management in 2008, Cooper led numerous businesses within the securities division, including the energy sales group, the futures business, and the commodities business in Europe and Asia.

A graduate of Harvard and Northwestern's MBA program, Cooper grew up in New York City with four siblings. As a child she wanted to go into fashion, according to a Forbes profile, and dreamed of opening a boutique shop on Madison Avenue called "Classics."

Cooper recently wrote a candid op-ed article about race in the workplace in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.

She joined Goldman Sachs in 1996 and made partner in 2000. She has been an executive vice president since 2011 and sits on the management committee, and is vice chair of the partnership committee.

Michael Daffey — Global cochief operating officer of the equities franchise

London-based Daffey is co-COO of equities with Paul Russo, with the former sales specialist complementing Russo's trading background.

Daffey joined Goldman Sachs back in 1994, making partner in 2002, and has previously headed global equities sales and head of fixed income and foreign exchange sales for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Back in 2008, he was described as the "unofficial gatekeeper" to a $1 million fantasy football league, and he also features in Greg Smith's book "Why I Left Goldman Sachs," in which he is described as a "rising star" and a "social genius." New York magazine called him the "the moral hero of the book."

With Russo, he runs a business that generated $5.3 billion in revenues in the first nine months of the year, putting it on a par with the fixed income, currencies, and commodities unit.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc is again facing questions about who would succeed longtime Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein when he eventually steps down.

The Wall Street investment bank's president and chief operating officer, Gary Cohn, was widely considered Blankfein's heir apparent but is now a candidate to lead the White House budget office.

Meanwhile, Michael Sherwood, who has also been floated over the years as a Blankfein successor, retired as Goldman's head of European operations last week..

While Cohn has not yet been officially picked for a role in the White House, his talks with President-elect Donald Trump cast light again on succession planning at Goldman.

The recent developments also may give rise to a new group of leaders at the bank, most of whom have spent more than 20 years of their careers there.

To be sure, Blankfein, who has been CEO since 2006, has shown no signs that he will step down soon, even after a cancer battle.

Unlike other Wall Street firms that have had significant turnover in their upper ranks, Goldman's leadership has remained remarkably stable over the years. Some Goldman executives have privately lamented that this has created stagnation for the next generation of leaders.

Cohn runs the bank's day-to-day operations and rose up the ranks on the trading floor withBlankfein, who has the second-longest tenure as a current top executive of a major Wall Street bank behind JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon.

If Cohn does join the Trump administration, his role as Goldman president may be split, according to people familiar with the matter. Chief Financial Officer Harvey Schwartz and investment banking co-head David Solomon are likely candidates, the sources added.

A Goldman spokesman declined to comment.

Schwartz, who joined Goldman in 1997 and has been CFO for three years, is known as a capable and cautious risk-manager. Like Cohn, he is a veteran of the company's trading floor.

Solomon, meanwhile, is a Bear Stearns veteran who joined Goldman in 1999. He climbed the management ladder quickly, a rarity at a bank that typically promotes employees at a slow pace. Soon after Blankfein became CEO, Solomon assumed his current role, where he helps to run Goldman's mergers and capital-raising businesses.

Pablo Salame, who is co-head of the bank's trading unit, and Stephen Scherr, CEO of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, are mentioned as potential replacements for Schwartz if he is promoted, some of the sources said.

Salame joined Goldman in 1996 and has held various trading positions in both fixed income and equities in New York and London.

Scherr, who is also Goldman's head of strategy, is responsible for building out consumer banking for the company. He started at Goldman as an associate in 1993.

Chief Accounting Officer and Controller Sarah Smith is also a contender for CFO, the sources added.

SEE ALSO: The Goldman Sachs power players behind Lloyd Blankfein

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The stock market has gone on quite a tear since the election of Donald Trump. In fact, the colloquial name for the recent surge in the market is the "Trump rally."

One company has stood above the rest during this "Trump rally," however.

As noted by market legend Art Cashin, the director of floor operations at UBS and long-time trading veteran, Goldman Sachs, one of the 30 stocks making up the Dow Jones Industrial Average index, has been responsible for a huge amount of the increase in that index. From Cashin's daily commentary on Wednesday (emphasis added):

"The Dow closed up 35 points and almost 23 of those points came from Goldman Sachs (GS). In fact, our good friend and fellow trading veteran, Jim Brown, at Option Investor, points out that GS has rallied $57 since the election. That means that GS has provided 441 of the 1363 points that the Dow has rallied. In case your calculator batteries are dead, that's about one third of the rally, all due to Goldman."

In fact, the recent jump for Goldman has put the stock at an all-time high.

Investors seem to be betting that the deregulation of the financial industry — Trump and his new Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have talked about rolling back the Dodd-Frank Act passed after the financial crisis — and rising interest rates in the bond market could be a boon for Goldman.

Trump was sometimes critical of the bank prior to the election, even featuring Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein in an ad highlighting people that the candidate claimed did not have America's interests in mind. Blankfein came out after the ad in support of Hillary Clinton.

Trump has hired a number of Goldman Sachs alums in powerful administration positions, including Mnuchin, who was a Goldman banker for 17 years.

SEE ALSO: 'I'm going to negotiate prices': Trump explains why he went after Boeing over Air Force One

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein may not have voted for President-elect Donald Trump, but he is ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Mr. Trump may turn out to be a much better president than anyone else might have been in that place," Blankfein said in an interview with the German newspaper Handelsblatt.

"He's a very smart guy, a businessman …I am not pessimistic at all because he won."

Blankfein supported Trump's rival, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, in the election, and donated to her campaign in 2008.

"I think her positioning, not only in terms of her ideology, but what I regard as a pragmatism that I saw demonstrated when she was our senator and in earlier stages of her political career when she could cross the aisle and engage other people to get things done, I admire that,"Blankfein said in a CNN interview in October.

"It stands out a little today — that kind of willingness to engage and compromise, but let's just stop at engage — that willingness to engage is a scarcer commodity these days."

But now he says he's going to give Trump a chance.

"If there are policies that are more stimulative, our fortunes rise along with that. ... The declared policies of Mr. Trump are therefore a good thing," he told Handelsblatt.

The Wall Street executive also said he would consider joining the administration, according to the interview, though he has not been approached by Trump's transition team. 

Trump appointed former Goldman Sachs banker Steven Mnuchin Treasury secretary last month, and Steve Bannon, his incoming chief strategist, is also a Goldman Sachs alum. The president-elect is also reportedly considering Goldman Sachs COO and President Gary Cohn for a role in the administration.

Goldman Sachs shares are up 30% since Trump's victory on November 8.

Read the full interview in Handelsblatt»

SEE ALSO: Goldman Sachs shares are up 30% since Trump's victory

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Goldman Sachs has named David Solomon and Harvey Schwartz the new co-chief operating officers and presidents for the bank, replacing longtime COO and President Gary Cohn, according to an announcement Wednesday.

Schwartz is currently chief financial officer and will stay in that role until the end of April, when he will be replaced by Martin Chavez, a former tech exec who is currently the chief information officer.

Solomon is cohead of the investment-banking division.

The COO role has traditionally been second-in-command at the bank after Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

Richard Gnodde and Pablo Salame were also appointed vice chairmen of the bank.

"These five leaders have distinguished themselves in their respective areas of expertise and I look forward to working with them in formulating and executing our global strategy," Blankfein said in a statement. "They have consistently demonstrated their unwavering commitment to Goldman Sachs, our clients, and our people."

The move comes just two days after Cohn, the current COO and right-hand man to Blankfein, accepted a position leading the National Economic Council for President-elect Donald Trump.

Both Solomon and Schwartz were viewed as strong possibilities to replace Cohn.

Here's what you need to know about the executives who have been promoted:

SEE ALSO: 'This spot in my heart, in my mind, will be here for a long time': Gary Cohn says goodbye to Goldman Sachs

David Solomon — president and co-chief operating officer

Solomon, 54, has been named president and co-COO with Harvey Schwartz.

He was previously cohead of investment banking in New York, holding that role since 2006. Before that, he was the global head of the financing group. He played an important role in revamping the investment bank's junior-banker policies in 2015 to fast-track top performers to promotion, encourage mobility, and replace some tasks with technology.

In a less traditional path to Wall Street than many of his peers, Solomon skipped the Ivy League and studied political science at Hamilton College in upstate New York. He has said he values his liberal-arts education for the communication, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills it afforded him.

Solomon joined the firm as a partner in 1999 after stints with Bear Stearns, Drexel Burnham, and Salomon Brothers.

He also once gave life-changing career advice to Clippers guard J.J. Redick.

Harvey Schwartz — president and co-chief operating officer

Schwartz has been named president and co-COO, and he will continue as CFO until April.

Schwartz, 52, has been CFO since 2013. In 1997 he joined the trading shop J. Aron — the same firm Blankfein joined 15 years earlier — as it was merging with Goldman Sachs.

When he joined, Blankfein was managing J. Aron, which merged into Goldman's fixed income, currencies, and commodities unit. Gary Cohn was global head of commodities at the time, according to a Bloomberg profile, so Schwartz reported to him and Blankfein.

Schwartz made partner at Goldman Sachs in 2002 and became cohead of the Americas Financing Group within the investment-banking division. He was later appointed to global head of the securities division before becoming CFO.

"If you look at the history of the firm, there are not a lot of people who have actually lived and functioned at a kind of a high management level in both the sales and trading world and the investment-banking world, and Harvey has," Goldman's former copresident Jon Winkelried told Bloomberg in 2012. "Harvey is extremely well-prepared."

Schwartz grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, and graduated from Rutgers. He is 6-foot-4 and an "enthusiastic and mediocre" golfer, according to the Bloomberg report.

R. Martin Chavez — chief financial officer

Chavez has been named deputy chief financial officer, and he will take over as chief financial officer from Harvey Schwartz in full in April.

He made his name as chief information officer, leading Goldman Sachs' technology efforts. He led the development of the firm's own programming language for risk calculations.

He also breaks the mold of a typical Wall Street executive. A onetime tech startup founder, he is part of a small group of senior Latino executives at Goldman; just 3.5% of the firm's senior officials and managers identify as Hispanic or Latino.

When he joined the bank in 1993, he was one of its first openly gay employees. He sports a sleeve of tattoos.

Stock markets have been on a tear since Donald Trump's electoral victory in November, but at least one Wall Street titan says the president-elect can't take all the credit.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on Wednesday told CNBC that the market had been on the right path before the election and that the "Trump effect" simply added to the momentum.

"I think one of the reasons why the election had such a dramatic effect is because it was drawing people in the direction that it was already heading," Blankfein said from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"I think the markets were improving, you know, the Fed's focus on the likelihood of them raising rates, the growth was already in it," he said of the Federal Reserve. "We were already getting at or near full employment."

Those factors, he said, were already "baked in" and provide a tailwind for Trump's "stimulative" platform.

Goldman's own stock has helped lead the rally and is currently up about 26.7% since the election.

His comments contrast those of other Wall Street CEOs who appear more bullish on Trump's plan for the economy. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan told CNBC that "some people are starting to spend in anticipation" of tax reform and repatriation resulting from Trump's election.

"I've heard some CEOs here say, 'I'm going to invest faster now,'" he said.

Of course, Blankfein said, Trump's message has filled investors with greater confidence. The president-elect has promised lower corporate taxes, more infrastructure spending, and less regulation, among other things.

Blankfein added that the Trump effect did not result just from the difference between the new expectations and the status quo, but rather from the difference between the new expectations and what had been built in for a Hillary Clinton win. Blankfein said before the election that he was backing her bid for president.

That said, Blankfein referred to the president-elect as simply "part of the macroenvironment."

"It was going in this way, you know, the basic bones of the US economy is good," Blankfein said.

"The balance sheets of companies and balance sheets of individuals had been fixed. Again, we've talked about full employment, wage growth ... so this is pushing in the direction of the momentum."

When asked if he wished he had backed a different horse, given that Clinton had pushed for higher taxes and more regulation, Blankfein said there was more to it than just those two factors.

"Let me put it this way: I am dying to look back at this and like the outcome of it, and I'm certainly going to behave in as supportive of a fashion as I possibly can to make sure that I like it," he said.

Goldman Sachs reported fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday that beat analysts' expectations.

Head to CNBC for the full interview »

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LONDON – The boss of Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs told Prime Minister Theresa May that her plan to drag Britain into a "hard Brexit" will clear the path for other cities to take away London's role as Europe's financial centre.

According to the Financial Times, which cited sources that were briefed on a closed door meeting between Lloyd Blankfein with Britain's prime minister at the World Economic Forum this year, Blankfein "talked tough" and "said there was no reason why European financial centres can’t set up as effective rivals."

This is unless the "government gives more priority to the City in Brexit negotiations," said the FT.

On top of that, he apparently "expressed bemusement" that May "appears to treat finance like any other industry, despite its major contribution to the UK economy and its exchequer." Goldman Sachs was one of the Remain campaign's biggest donors.

On January 17, May outlined her negotiating stance for Brexit, which included a rejection of the single market and an end to the free movement of people, resulting in a so-called "Hard Brexit." This would likely have the result of stripping the City of its passport.

The loss of passporting rights following Brexit is one of the biggest fears in the City of London and seems almost a certainty under May's "Hard Brexit" plan.

If the passport is taken away, London could cease to be the most important financial centre in Europe, costing the UK thousands of jobs and billions in revenues. Around 5,500 firms registered in the UK rely on the European Union’s passporting rights for the financial services sector, and they turn over about £9 billion in revenue. There has been a surge in applications for Irish passports following the UK's vote to leave the European Union.

Goldman employs around 6,000 people in Britain, and London is its main European operation.

However, only a week ago, there was a report that said Goldman Sachs is considering cutting its staffing numbers in London by up to 50% due to Brexit fears.

It said that the bank also plans to shift 1,000 people to Frankfurt and set up a new European subsidiary as it prepares for the UK to leave the European Union. Goldman is also reportedly considering moving operations staff to Warsaw and New York, reducing the number of people in London by 3,000. 

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on Sunday night sent a voicemail message to all Goldman employees in response to President Donald Trump's travel ban.

Trump on Friday signed an executive order barring people from seven majority-Muslim countries — Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen — from entering the US. The order originally included US green-card holders, but the White House later exempted them from the ban.

"This is not a policy we support," Blankfein said in the message.

"[We] are focused on supporting our colleagues and their families who may be affected."

Here is the full text of the message:

"This is Lloyd. The president has issued an executive order that, generally, bans individuals from seven different countries from entering the United States and freezes the broader refugee program. This is not a policy we support, and I would note that it has already been challenged in federal court, and some of the order has been enjoined at least temporarily.

"If the order were to become or remain effective, I recognize that there is potential for disruption to the firm, and especially to some of our people and their families. I want to assure all of you that we will work to minimize such disruption to the extent we can within the law and are focused on supporting our colleagues and their families who may be affected.

"Let me close by quoting from our business principles: 'For us to be successful, our men and women must reflect the diversity of the communities and cultures in which we operate. That means we must attract, retain and motivate people from many backgrounds and perspectives. Being diverse is not optional; it is what we must be.' Now is a fitting time to reflect on those words and the principles that underlie them."

Blankfein supported Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton during the election campaign.

His former No. 2 deputy, Gary Cohn, recently stepped down as president and chief operating officer to join Trump's administration as head of the National Economic Council. Two other Trump hires, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and chief strategist Steve Bannon, are also former Goldman Sachs employees.

In a recent interview with CNBC, Blankfein said Trump could not take full credit for the stock market rally over the past few months.

JPMorgan's operating committee, which includes CEO Jamie Dimon, on Sunday sent a memo to employees expressing an "unwavering commitment" to employees.

Numerous business leaders from the tech world also spoke out against the immigration ban over the weekend, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Tim Cook.

SEE ALSO: JPMORGAN ON TRUMP'S TRAVEL BAN: We have an 'unwavering commitment' to our staff

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has heard enough people talk about uncertainty in the markets lately that, he says, it's starting to sound "trite."

So in a recent video posted on Goldman Sachs' website, Blankfein delved into the causes of that uncertainty and why, in his view, everything would be OK.

"I hear from our clients, 'Where are things going to go? What should we do?'" Blankfein said. "And I'll tell you: It's uncertain for a reason, because there are a lot of new things going on."

The Trump administration is expected to take a significantly different policy stance not only from the Obama administration's, he said, but also from what we might have expected from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

"That's a very wide gap," Blankfein said, "and most of those policy changes are in the nature of stimulus."

Under Trump, Blankfein said, we can expect to see less regulation, rather than more; lower taxes, rather than higher; and a bigger commitment to infrastructure spending. That has boosted gross-domestic-product expectations and optimism.

Blankfein last May described the "low confidence" environment in the US and its impacts on various businesses within Goldman Sachs. At the time he said there were "signs on the horizon" that we were moving away from that period, including rising employment levels, low energy prices, and the Federal Reserve's decision to start raising interest rates.

Blankfein said, however, that the positive turn the markets had taken since Trump's election should be viewed in the wider context of a previously evolving macroeconomic environment. Expectations for rising interest rates, for example, were already baked in before the election.

Blankfein has previously said the market rally that followed Trump's electoral win was a continuation of a trend.

"It was drawing people in the direction that it was already heading," the chief executive said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.

'Change in general creates opportunity'

In this week's video, he pointed to some potential adjustments ahead, including diverging currency rates as a result of diverging economic performance.

"The cost of that divergence, you'll get differences in interest rates that could very well lead to differences in currency rates," Blankfein said.

But that doesn't mean we're in unprecedented times, he said.

"It's a vanity, always, at any given moment, to think, 'My goodness we have challenges of a dimension we've never seen before — the world is more uncertain,'" he said.

"It always seems uncertain when you're living in it, and it always seems so simple and sure when you're looking back at it."

Instead, Blankfein said, we're simply undergoing a change from a cycle of low economic activity, very low interest rates, and a high level of pessimism about the future. Now markets are seeing more growth potential, more opportunity, and more optimism.

"So I'd say change in general creates opportunity," he said, "but change from a pessimistic state of mind to one of more optimism is the better of the two possibilities."

SEE ALSO: 'This is not a policy we support': Here's what Goldman's CEO told staff about Trump's immigration ban

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Democratic Senators Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren sent a letter to Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein on Friday asking for information regarding Goldman Sachs' influence over the Trump administration.

Specifically, Warren and Baldwin are concerned about how much input former and current Goldman Sachs employees have had over recent executive orders to roll back regulations on Wall Street, including the Dodd-Frank law that regulated banks after the financial crisis.

"The executive orders released by President Trump on Friday last week raise our concerns about the degree to which Mr. Cohn's advice to President Trump is good for Wall Street, but bad for Americans,"said Baldwin and Warren's letter.

"Mr. Trump released two executive orders with Mr. Cohn at his side, both from the Wall Street wish list: one promised to roll back Dodd-Frank rules put in place after the 2008 Financial Crisis, and another put in place a process that could eliminate new requirements that investment advisers act in their clients' best interests."

The letter cites Gary Cohn, the former COO and second-in-charge at Goldman, as a particular concern due to his position as the head of Trump's National Economic Council.

"We are concerned that Mr. Cohn — who received an extraordinary $284 million handout from Goldman Sachs as he left his 25-year career with the firm — will be unable to develop economic policies that will help middle-class families, and will instead favor Wall Street over Main Street,"the letter read. "We hope you can provide us with information that will assuage our concerns."

There are currently three former Goldman employees in the close circle of Trump's administration: Cohn, Trump's controversial adviser Steve Bannon, and Treasury secretary nominee Steven Mnuchin.

Warren and Baldwin also noted that the recent executive order was beneficial to Goldman's stock, which is one of the best-performing stocks since Trump's election.

"Goldman Sachs would be a major beneficiary of these efforts to deregulate the financial industry; the company's stock rose by almost 5%, increasing your company's market capitalization by $4.1 billion - the day of President Trump's announcement," said the letter.

Goldman Sachs' stock has rallied 33% since the election. 

The two senators are asking for all communication between Cohn and Goldman regarding the draft of the executive orders.

During the election, Goldman CEO Blankfein was a supporter of Hillary Clinton and cautioned about the negative impact of Trump's policies. He has since said he is willing to support the president, but spoke out against his recent travel ban.

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein dedicated a portion of his annual letter to defending his firm's tradition of sending alumni to government positions.

"Gary was not the first person from Goldman Sachs to join the government, and we hope and expect that he will not be the last," Blankfein wrote of Gary Cohn, his former no. 2 executive who left in December to join President Trump's administration.

He said the kinds of people that Goldman recruits "develop the skills to make a contribution in large, complex organizations and the expertise to help drive economic progress and job creation."

Cohn is one of several former Goldman Sachs employees to have joined Trump's administration. Others are Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin; chief strategist Steve Bannon; James Donovan, who will be Mnuchin's deputy; and the former president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation, Dina Powell, who has been named deputy national security adviser.

The trend extends beyond Trump's tenure. At least five Goldman Sachs CEOs have gone into government service, including Hank Paulson, who in 2006 left his role as chief executive to become Treasury Secretary.

"We will continue to encourage our people to contribute to government service if they are fortunate enough to be asked," Blankfein wrote.

Here's Blankfein's full comment:

"Gary was not the first person from Goldman Sachs to join the government, and we hope and expect that he will not be the last. Five of my most recent predecessors went into government service, and that has not been by happenstance. One ethic that has long pervaded Goldman Sachs is a commitment to public service if one is given the opportunity to serve. And that has been true over time and in many of the geographies in which we operate.

We recruit people who are oriented to the larger world, and their jobs require them to be both outwardly and inwardly facing. In the process, they develop the skills to make a contribution in large, complex organizations and the expertise to help drive economic progress and job creation.

We have been criticized for the fact that some of our colleagues, after long careers at the firm, have moved to work in the public sector. The charge is that Goldman Sachs is able to extract certain advantages that others cannot. In fact, the opposite is true. Those in government bend over backward to avoid any perception of favoritism.

We are proud of our tradition of leadership and public service and believe it is a core part of our culture. That is why we will continue to encourage our people to contribute to government service if they are fortunate enough to be asked.

We also have contributed our expertise and knowledge to broader public policy issues, such as fiscal policy. And, when certain issues impact our people, we have not hesitated to speak up on their behalf. In the past, we have commented on marriage equality, and more recently, immigration policy, because they both affect our ability to hire and retain people from the broadest pool of talent. We will continue to express our views on policies that affect our people, our business and the long-term interests of economic growth."

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was paid $22 million in total compensation in 2016, according to a regulatory filing.

That's down $1 million from the roughly $23 million in salary and bonuses he was paid in 2015 — which in turn was down $1 million from 2014.

His base salary for the year was unchanged at $2 million, while he received $20 million in performance-based awards and cash bonus.

Chief Financial Officer Harvey Schwartz received a total compensation of $20 million in 2016, compared with $21 million a year earlier. Schwartz was named co-COO and president together with David Solomon in late 2016.

Blankfein, 62, has been CEO of the global financial firm since 2006.

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to praise the infrastructure of China and suggest the US is falling behind in its maintenance of roads, bridges, and airports.

"Arrived in China, as always impressed by condition of airport, roads, cell service, etc. US needs to invest in infrastructure to keep up!" Blankfein tweeted.

The message is just the third tweet from the Goldman CEO. Blankfein joined Twitter on Thursday, criticizing President Donald Trump's decision to remove the US from the Paris climate change agreement.

Interestingly, Blankfein's tweet comes amid Trump's infrastructure push. The president announced a plan to privatize and modernize the US air traffic control system on Monday and will deliver a speech in Ohio highlighting his plans for a $1 trillion investment in infrastructure.

Trump frequently took aim at Goldman Sachs during his campaign, and Blankfein was even featured in an unflattering light in one of Trump's advertisements.

Since the election, Blankfein said he thinks some of Trump's policies could be good for the US economy, but has also taken issue with the travel ban.

Blankfein also isn't the only major bank CEO to point out China's more updated infrastructure. In an interview with Business Insider in May, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon also made a similar point.

"Then there is infrastructure," Dimon said. "You might be shocked to find out, we haven't built a major airport for 20 years. China built 75 in the past 10 years. It takes 10 years to get all the permits to build a bridge today. Ten years? What happened to the good old can-do America?"

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein ribbed President Donald Trump on social media Friday, at the end of one of his administration's most challenging weeks.

The Trump administration had intended to roll out its plans to revitalize US infrastructure— one of its biggest policy proposals after immigration and healthcare.

The infrastructure rollout was seen by some as a counterpunch to the highly publicized Senate testimony of former FBI director James Comey, who appeared before lawmakers to give his account of the tumultuous months that led up to Trump firing him.

The fallout to Comey's testimony was massive.

"Just landed from China, trying to catch up.... How did "infrastructure week" go," Blankfein quipped on Twitter Friday afternoon. That followed another tweet Blankfein sent on Tuesday: "Arrived in China, as always impressed by condition of airport, roads, cell service, etc. US needs to invest in infrastructure to keep up!"

Blankfein joined Twitter in 2011, but sent his first tweet just last week to rebuke Trump's decision to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement.

Despite Republican Party plans to hit back at Comey's testimony, viewers in the US were nonetheless captivated. Comey's appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday drew in nearly 20 million viewers, according to Nielsen.

Seemingly unfazed by Blankfein's tweet, Trump touted "infrastructure week"one more time, at 3:52 p.m. on Friday.

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John Mackey, the CEO and cofounder of Whole Foods, didn't want Goldman Sachs' help selling his company.

Goldman helped Amazon buy his company instead.

In a profile of the Whole Foods CEO in Texas Monthly, Mackey made a sarcastic joke to the magazine's Tom Foster about Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Activist investor Jana Partners took a stake in the high-end grocer in April and pushed for a sale, which Mackey was against, and Mackey said Blankfein tried to ingratiate himself during a meeting in hope of landing a deal.

Mackey had been due to give a speech at Goldman Sachs' Manhattan office when news of Jana Partners taking an activist stake in the company hit the wire. 

From Texas Monthly:

"From that moment on, I was drowning in it," Mackey says, "including when I got to Goldman Sachs. The CEO of Goldman [Lloyd Blankfein] wanted to meet with me because, of course"—he adopts a sardonic tone, a tic that tends to make his handlers stiffen up—"'Goldman Sachs would love to represent you. If you guys are going to be sold, we’d love to make one hundred million dollars doing that. Don’t forget your buddies at Goldman Sachs!'"

UPDATE: After the publication of this story, a Goldman Sachs spokesperson told Business Insider that Mackey did give a speech at Goldman headquarters the day of the Jana annoucement, but Blankfein never met with the Whole Foods CEO and never attempted to be part of a possible sale. In fact, Blankfein was not in the building the day of Mackey's speech

Goldman did not get in on the Whole Foods side of the deal, but instead is advising Amazon. It will help to provide a bridge loan to Amazon to buy the company for $13.7 billion along with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and an Amazon filing said Goldman Sachs will be the only firm to receive "brokerage fees, commissions or finder's fees" for the merger.

Looks like Blankfein got the last laugh after all.

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein started tweeting this month, and it's fair to say he jumped right in. 

In his first tweet, the Wall Street CEO, using the handle @lloydblankfein, lamented President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the Paris agreement.

In his third tweet, coming the day after Trump kicked off his "infrastructure week," he raved about the impressive infrastructure in one of the US's rival superpowers — China. 

His fourth sarcastically asked how "infrastructure week" had gone, after former FBI Director James Comey delivered a Senate testimony that overshadowed any of Trump's legislative proposals that week.

In an interview on CNBC's "Mad Money with Jim Cramer," Blankfein was asked why he started tweeting. He said:

• "In the financial crisis there was no – nobody knew anything about what Goldman Sachs did."
• "And I said, 'If this ever happens again, I'm not going to allow there to be a vacuum about what we're like. I'm going to go – we're going to have to communicate to the world more of what we do.' Which we've done institutionally, but also, there's a personal element to it too."
• "And the reason why I do it, it has to fall in my mind, in one of a couple of categories. Either it's something that is kind of in our wheelhouse of expertise, like for – so I comment that it would be very, very bad to let US government default."
• "Before Twitter, I did those things by press release. The other thing I'll comment on is when things really affect the ability of our people to be who they are and to do their job and to be effective as professionals. And that's got the LGBT, the immigrant ban, so that people couldn't move around with their spouses when they have had a passport for another country. So I commented on those issues because, really, I kind of have to be the champion of our people. And I owe it, I kind of owe it to the body politic to comment where I have expertise. They could take my advice or not. I don't make decisions. But I do give them our expertise."
  

Here's the full transcript:

JIM CRAMER: We're back with Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs. Lloyd, you’re tweeting. What is that all about?

LLOYD BLANKFEIN: You know, I agree. It's not – for an institutional kind of firm like us, it's not that usual. But I tell you, part of it – you asked me about the financial crisis before. In the financial crisis there was no – nobody knew anything about what Goldman Sachs did.

JIM CRAMER: No.

LLOYD BLANKFEIN: What, you know, the value we create, what we do in the communities. Also, the importance we do in raising capital for people who need capital, helping them create business, hire people, the virtuous circle of employed people buying more – you know, it's quite virtuous as we know it. And I said, "If this ever happens again, I'm not going to allow there to be a vacuum about what we're like. I'm going to go – we're going to have to communicate to the world more of what we do." Which we've done institutionally, but also, there's a personal element to it too. And although the financial crisis, you know, receded a while ago, we kind of never picked up on it. And I just thought—

JIM CRAMER: Three outta six of these, Lloyd, are, I would say, antagonistic to the president.

LLOYD BLANKFEIN: Well, I'd say they're comments. Now, I've always commented on certain issues. And this is how I think of it: I don't use that platform for Lloyd Blankfein's personal point of view, because I know I'm interesting to people because my role at Goldman. Now, my role at Goldman, so I – to communicate, and I've done it before by press release you recall – I commented on immigration, I commented on LGBT issues. I commented, obviously on the environment more recently. Spending on infrastructure. And the reason why I do it, it has to fall in my mind, in one of a couple of categories. Either it's something that is kind of in our wheelhouse of expertise, like for – so I comment that it would be very, very bad to let U.S. government default.

JIM CRAMER: Right.

LLOYD BLANKFEIN: That's in our wheelhouse. Before Twitter, I did those things by press release. The other thing I'll comment on is when things really affect the ability of our people to be who they are and to do their job and to be effective as professionals. And that's got the LGBT, the immigrant ban, so that people couldn't move around with their spouses when they have had a passport for another country. So I commented on those issues because, really, I kind of have to be the champion of our people. And I owe it, I kind of owe it to the body politic to comment where I have expertise. They could take my advice or not. I don't make decisions. But I do give them our expertise.

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You'll be able to access and manage your Goldman Sachs accounts through an app on your smartphone in the near future.

Goldman Sachs, which has been expanding its offerings to retail consumers in recent years, is building an iOS app for its growing crop of digital retail banking services, according to a job listing on the company website. 

The bank is recruiting mobile developers to work in its Consumer Finance Technology division and build a "best of breed platform that is both elegant and powerful" for its "all digital retail bank," which would likely include services like its new personal loan platform Marcus, high-yield savings accounts, and a forthcoming robo-advisor platform.

Here's the job posting (emphasis added):

"We are looking for an expert iOS developer to work on a greenfield enterprise-grade project delivered on iOS platforms.  Our goal in engineering is to facilitate the creative, iterative, and data driven creation of our all digital retail bank. As a Mobile Developer you will be working closely with our marketing team and UX designers to build mobile user experiences which will be A/B tested for effectiveness and impact to our clients. The code you write will reach millions and help redefine the firm."

The company has existing mobile apps for its high-net worth wealth management customers, as well as for employee recruitment and monitoring markets, but it hasn't previously released an app for retail banking consumers. 

When reached for comment, a company spokesman wouldn't say whether a new consumer app was was under construction.

"We're always interested in finding great tech talent, but we don't have anything to announce," said Andrew Williams, vice president for corporate communications at Goldman Sachs.

Goldman Sachs — which is best known for wealth management, trading, and investment banking — has been rapidly expanding its retail footprint, notably with the October launch of Marcus, which offers unsecured personal loans from $3,500 to $30,000 to prime borrowers.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein told CNBC in June that the online lending platform had already issued more than $1 billion in loans, eclipsing that mark quicker than other online personal lending competitors like Prosper or Lending Club. Marcus is on track to extend $2 billion in loans by the end of the year. 

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein fired out a cryptic tweet on Monday referencing the solar eclipse.

"Wish the moon wasn't the only thing casting a shadow across the country," he tweeted. "We got through one, we'll get through the other. #SolarEclipse2017."

It is unclear to whom or what Blankfein is referring.

He has, however, previously used Twitter to comment on the Trump administration and its policies.

He posted his first tweet after President Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris agreement on climate change:

During and after a trip to China, he commented on the administration's "Infrastructure Week":

And after the violence at the white-supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, this month, he cited Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech:

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Lloyd Blankfein is new to Twitter, but he's already tweeted out a throw-back-Thursday. 

The 62-year-old CEO of financial powerhouse Goldman Sachs tweeted a picture of his old college ID Thursday morning to commemorate the start of the new school year. 

As you can tell, he looked a bit different back then. Take a look:

Blankfein earned a scholarship to Harvard after graduating as valedictorian of his high school class.

After his undergrad career, Blankfein attended Harvard Law School. He practiced law for a while but ultimately went into finance. He got his start at J. Aron & Company, a commodity trading firm. He joined Goldman's ranks when J. Aron & Company was acquired by the investment bank in 1981.

During his time at Goldman, he led the Fixed Income, Currency, and Commodities (FICC) division and served as president and COO.

He's been the CEO of Goldman Sachs since 2006.

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Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has bitcoin on his mind, a day after reports broke that his firm was considering setting up a bitcoin trading operation. 

The billionaire banker tweeted on Tuesday that he wasn't completely sure about his stance on the red-hot cryptocurrency. 

Blankfein said he's "still thinking about bitcoin" and that he was not flat out endorsing or denouncing the digital currency. Here's the full tweet:

On Monday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Goldman Sachs is in the very early stages of potentially setting up a bitcoin trading operation.

"In response to client interest in digital currencies we are exploring how best to serve them in this space," a Goldman spokeswoman told The Journal.

If Goldman follows through, it will be the first blue-chip financial services firm to break into the cryptocurrency market, which this year has exploded in value by more than 720% to $145 billion.

Recently, a string of top Wall Streeters have weighed in on bitcoin, which is up 350% this year, and the broader cryptocurrency market. 

It all started when JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon called bitcoin "a fraud" and said it was "worse than tulips bulbs" in the 1600s. Then, Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman took a more moderate position on bitcoin, saying itwas "more than just a fad."

In a recent interview with Bloomberg News, Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, the world's largest investor with $5.7 trillion under management, said he thinks the explosive growth of bitcoin points to nefarious behavior. 

"It just identifies how much money laundering there is being done in the world," Fink said. "How much people are trying to move currencies from one place to another."

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