Goldman Sachs has named a tatted-up former tech exec to a key role
The US bank named David Solomon and Harvey Schwartz the new co-chief operating officers for the bank, replacing long-time COO Gary Cohn, according to an announcement on Wednesday.
Schwartz is currently CFO of the company and will stay in that role until the end of April 2017, when he will be replaced by Martin Chavez, who is currently the Chief Information Officer.
Chavez is far from your average Wall Streeter. 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.
Chavez has followed an unusual path to the C-Suite at Goldman Sachs. In a candid conversation with Goldman interns earlier this year, Chavez confessed that before going to Harvard, he had never been east of New Mexico, where he grew up.
He was approached by a headhunter for Goldman while pursuing a PhD in computer science at Stamford, joining the US bank to be a "computer geek," before eventually moving to the commodities trading desk.
He then left to join Credit Suisse, before leaving banking altogether to found Kiodex, a commodities risk-management software company. SunGard acquired Kiodex in 2004, and Chavez retired to a beach house on Fire Island.
Gary Cohn later called Chavez to congratule Chavez on the sale of his company. Then he said, "I was just calling to share with you that you're coming back."
A decade later, Cohn's departure has led to Chavez getting a big promotion.