Saturday, 21 Sep 2024

Goldman Sachs Tells Its Bankers to Loosen Their Neckties

For decades, Goldman Sachs’s bankers have flown across the world pitching prospective clients and drawing up multibillion-dollar deals in expensive suits, ties and pantsuits.

Those deal makers can now plan on dressing down — at least a little bit.

Goldman Sachs told its employees on Tuesday that it planned to relax its dress code. In an internal memorandum, executives said that they were adopting a “flexible” dress code in keeping with the times.

It’s the latest attempt by a Wall Street firm to cater to the younger workers that the industry eagerly tries to recruit. A top competitor, JPMorgan Chase, took the leap into business casual nearly three years ago, making a more informal look the default dress code.

The new sartorial rules are also a concession to the Silicon Valley giants that Goldman and other banks have assiduously courted, companies where the norm is jeans and wool sneakers, not bespoke suits and Gucci loafers. (Deal makers have been known to don hoodies to win business from the likes of Facebook.)

“We want all of our clients to feel comfortable with and confident in our team, so please dress in a manner that is consistent with your clients’ expectations,” Goldman executives said in the memo.

David M. Solomon, Goldman’s chief, has himself drawn attention for his seemingly unbankerlike pursuits, including his side hustle as a D.J., going by the name of D-Sol, whose first single cracked the Billboard Top 100 charts. And, like his counterpart at JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, Mr. Solomon has been known to go tieless for public occasions.

But Wall Street’s efforts to embrace casual dress have been met, unsurprisingly, with caution. Denim remains a relative rarity among bankers based beyond the West Coast, perhaps for fear of being seen by their bosses as slacking off.

Indeed, Mr. Solomon and his lieutenants urged some restraint.

“Of course, casual dress is not appropriate every day and for every interaction,” they wrote in the memo. “We trust you will consistently exercise good judgment in this regard.”

Follow Michael J. de la Merced on Twitter: @m_delamerced.

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