Solomon took a strange dig at Credit Suisse and Citi on Goldman’s recent quarterly earnings call. He delivered remarks about special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) that were clearly rehearsed, saying that the current explosion in deal volume is unsustainable.
“We generally strive to be number one in league tables,” Solomon said. “We do not strive to be number one in the Spac league table. [Although] we are very active, we’re very thoughtful about our sponsors and the business that we take on. And just looking at last year, if you look at the number of Spacs that were done and the league table leaders, the number one and number two firms did about 33% more deals than we did – representative, I think, of some of the things that came to us that we turned away.”
Goldman ranked number three for Spac deals in 2020 behind Credit Suisse and Citi.
The number one firm – Credit Suisse – avoided taking Solomon’s remarks too personally and concurred with his view that $15 billion of Spac volume in the first two weeks of 2021 does not represent a viable run-rate for the rest of the year.
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