Blankfein Becomes Billionaire Riding Goldman’s Shares To Riches

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. made hundreds of partners rich when it went public in 1999. Its performance since then has turned Lloyd Blankfein into a billionaire.

The chief executive officer of the Wall Street bank for the past nine years, Blankfein has seen his net worth surge to about $1.1 billion as the firm’s shares quadrupled since the initial public offering, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. As the largest individual owner of Goldman Sachs stock, he has a stake in the company worth almost $500 million. Real estate and an investment portfolio seeded by cash bonuses and distributions from the bank’s private-equity funds add more than $600 million.

For Blankfein, the son of a New York postal worker, the accumulation of wealth has been dramatic. He’s one of the few current leaders of a big global bank who reached a senior- executive rank before his firm went public. That won’t happen again anytime soon, as Goldman Sachs was the last major Wall Street firm to end its private partnership.

“It will be a rare thing,” said Alan Johnson, managing director of compensation-consulting firm Johnson Associates. “Most people won’t have as long of a career at a high level, and it’s certainly unusual to keep as much of that stock that you’ve been granted. And then, of course, the firm you work for has to be really successful.”

Enormous Wealth

Blankfein, 60, was co-head of fixed-income trading when Goldman Sachs had its IPO, an event that created enormous wealth for executives. Partners in the firm received stock valued at an average of $63.6 million at the time of the sale. Henry Paulson, the bank’s CEO before and after the IPO, had almost $600 million of stock and options when he left to become U.S. Treasury Secretary in 2006, a move that allowed him to sell his stake without paying taxes.

Shares in the firm have climbed 298 percent since the IPO, compared with a 6 percent drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index. The stock has doubled in the past three years, reaching its highest level since 2007.

Jake Siewert, a spokesman for New York-based Goldman Sachs, wouldn’t confirm or dispute Bloomberg’s calculation. He said Blankfein declined to comment on his personal wealth.