Joe Montesano is one of a group of Goldman executives whose compensation rivals the more than $75 million paid to CEO David Solomon over the past three years.
Goldman Sachs has lost a trader who was instrumental in the Wall Street giant’s rise to No. 1 in equities trading for two consecutive years.
Joe Montesano, 46, has told the bank he is stepping down as head of equities operations for the Americas to take a break, according to people with knowledge of the situation. He hasn’t set another job yet.
operations by algorithm
Montesano is part of a group of Goldman executives whose compensation rivals the more than $75 million paid to CEO David Solomon over the past three years. In 2021, he earned more than Solomon’s $35 million, boosted by his global oversight of the bank’s lucrative algorithmic trading business, said the people, who asked not to be named.
The algorithmic trading desk generated more revenue per employee than almost any other investment banking team that year. And equity operations as a whole jumped ahead of JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley in 2021 and 2022, with revenue of nearly $23 billion in the period.
A bank spokesman declined to comment.
Montesano joined Goldman in 1999, the same year the bank went public. He worked for a subsidiary, Hull Trading, known for quantitative and technology-based strategies. He worked his way through various equities roles before landing the top job in US equity trading.
What Goldman calls algorithmic trading is better known in the industry as an index recalibration operation. The bank develops systems to predict which stocks will be added to or dropped from benchmark indexes because of mergers, earnings growth or a slowdown. That business had years of huge prominence in 2020 and 2021 before cooling off.
To stay ahead of rival banks and compete with the world’s most sophisticated hedge funds in this area, Goldman brings traders and programmers together to develop mathematical models and software tools that it uses to allocate its own capital. The team’s operators are well compensated to avoid being hooked by other banks or funds, and they are among the bank’s most envied professionals.
With a report by By Sridhar Natarajan, from Bloomberg, for Valor Econômico.
