When Andrea Vella was put on leave from Goldman Sachs a little over a year ago, perhaps he thought this whole Malaysian money-laundering-and-bribery thing would blow over and he could go back to co-heading investment banking in Asia or some such after a dignified period in exile. After all, he’d managed to survive his last scrape with sovereign wealth fund follies, that with the Libyan Investment Authority, arguing (successfully!) that whatever blame placed at Goldman’s door for all the money the Libyans lost was simply the result of some poor Libyan attempting to avoid Muammar Gaddafi’s gallows.
Unfortunately for Vella, the 1MDB affair has become the worst scandal to ruffle the Elect in decades, one that is likely to be very, very expensive for the bank, and which might see Vella himself in handcuffs should he ever be so foolish as to find himself in a country with an extradition treaty with Malaysia. Luckily, since whatever jokes he had to tell about dictatorial show trials failed to sway the Federal Reserve, he won’t have to be doing any travelling in the region on Goldman’s—or any other bank’s—behalf anymore.
The Fed on Tuesday said it had permanently barred Andrea Vella from the banking industry for his role in Goldman’s financing of a multibillion-dollar fraud involving 1Malaysia Development Bhd., a sovereign-wealth fund.
Mr. Vella left the firm in recent days, a person familiar with the matter said.
A lawyer for Mr. Vella said his client agreed to the ban, which does not require him to pay a fine or admit wrongdoing, “in order to move on to the next stage of his career and to avoid putting himself and his family through years of litigation.”
Best of luck with that. And also to these folks, who are leaving Goldman of their own free will, more or less.
Adam Korn, who represented a new kind of Wall Street trader—one reared on computer code, not instinct—is leaving the firm, people familiar with the matter said. His departure follows that of Martin Chavez, a technologist and trading executive who left at the end of last year. Another senior engineering executive, Ezra Nahum, also announced his resignation Tuesday.
More resignations are expected across the firm in the coming weeks, as 2019 bonuses are paid out….
Chief Executive David Solomon has hired from Silicon Valley and promoted investment bankers into senior tech roles.
Last fall he hired a pair of outsiders, Amazon.com Inc. veteran Marco Argenti and former Yahoo executive Atte Lahtiranta, to help lead Goldman’s technology efforts.
That has appeared to leave less room for executives like Mr. Korn…
Goldman Executive Exits After He Is Barred From Banking Over 1MDB Scandal [WSJ]
King of Goldman’s ‘Straders’ to Leave Firm [WSJ]