The road from Wall Street to Washington is a very well-trodden one, as many ‘Government Sachs’ alumni will attest.
From Sidney Weinberg during the Second World War through to the rather less respected Steve Bannon in the early days of the Trump administration, Goldman has been on the CV of numerous government officials.
Hank Paulson, Gary Cohn, Steve Mnuchin and William Dudley at the Federal Reserve. Gary Gensler at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the European Central Bank’s very own ex-supremo, Mario Draghi.
Indeed, the UK now has its very own Mini-Me version in Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, who worked at Goldman from 2001 to 2004. He subsequently joined the hedge fund industry, working at, among others, the Children’s Investment Fund.
Perhaps it is time for other US banks to get in on the act. Step forward Ray McGuire, ex-vice chairman at Citi, who launched his campaign to become New York Mayor on December 2, having left Citi just six weeks previously.
Taking the idea of running for office somewhat literally, his campaign was launched with a video of McGuire jogging through the pandemic-ravaged streets of the city and overlaid with bleak narration from film director Spike Lee.
McGuire’s rags to riches back story – he was raised by a single mother in Dayton, Ohio – is certainly more relatable than, for example, Sunak’s (Winchester College, Oxford University).
Some years ago, McGuire described himself in Euromoney as “a statistical aberration”. Starting his career in the mergers and acquisitions group of First Boston, he then followed Bruce Wasserstein and Joe Perella when they left to start Wasserstein, Perella & Co. He joined Citi from Morgan Stanley in 2005.
If McGuire is successful in his campaign, maybe he will inspire others at Citi to do the same. The big political move that everyone on Wall Street is waiting for, however, is, of course, at another bank altogether.
Will Jamie Dimon’s run for president involve audio-visuals from Martin Scorsese?
