Bill Cohan, Columnist

Goldman's Prince Charles Should Sit Tight

The burning question is when Lloyd Blankfein, 58, will leave the firm to make way for Gary Cohn, Goldman's 52-year-old Prince Charles.

June 13, 2013 at 5:30 PM UTC

By Bill Cohan

William D. Cohan, a Bloomberg View columnist, is the author of the forthcoming "The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite and the Corruption of Our Great Universities," as well as "Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World" and the New York Times best-sellers "House of Cards" and "The Last Tycoons." Cohan is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and writes frequently for the Financial Times, Fortune, the Atlantic and the Washington Post. He worked on Wall Street as a senior mergers and acquisitions banker for 15 years. He also worked for two years at GE Capital. Cohan is a graduate of Duke University, Columbia University School of Journalism and Columbia University Graduate School of Business. "The Last Tycoons" won the 2007 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

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According to Goldman Sachs chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein, this is what happens when "somebody who was assigned to Goldman Sachs didn't have anything good enough to write for a while." In any case, thanks to the New York Times's Susanne Craig, succession at Wall Street's top firm is back in the news

The burning question is when Blankfein, 58, will leave the firm to make way for Gary Cohn, Goldman's 52-year-old Prince Charles. Wall Street history is littered with CEOs and senior partners who refused to give up center stage in a timely manner. And who can blame them? There are few jobs around that command the power, prestige and financial remuneration of a Wall Street monarchy. Given the many heads that usually have to be chopped off to get to wear the crown, why would anyone give it up voluntarily?