IS DAVID SOLOMON TOO BIG A JERK TO RUN GOLDMAN SACHS?

Profit excuses a lot on Wall Street. But not everything. Inside a banking mutiny.

- JEN WIECZNER

Even people fond of David Solomon acknowledge that his equilibrium state is what most of us would consider tense.

The voice of the Goldman Sachs CEO is perpetually hoarse, as if he has permanently worn it out from screaming. "He sort of talks in a yelling voice," says one colleague. "He's not really yelling, but he sort of talks at you." "When he talks, he shouts," another banker agrees. "He always sounds like he's shouting-always." It's a tendency he can't even suppress in text: Solomon likes to MAKE NOTES ON DOCUMENTS IN ALL CAPS. The word a lot of people use about him is bully.

Solomon, 61, is bald and broad-shouldered, like a thicker and more wizened version of Mr. Clean, with eyes so squinted behind doughy features it's hard to tell what color they are. He walks heavily, a venti iced coffee almost always in hand, as though the sport of being a banker were a physically taxing one. Several years ago, when Goldman's board was auditioning him for promotion to CEO, the bank's image specialists gave Solomon tips on becoming more approachable. They suggested he walk the floors more often and create opportunities for small talk-perhaps by stopping at an assistant's desk to take a piece of candy.

"When I told him, 'You got to stick your hand in the candy bowl,' he just gave me this look like, Why would I do that? How is that productive?" recalls someone involved in the effort. The exercise did not succeed in endearing Solomon to the Goldman rank and file. "He would stomp around the floors in a really purposeful way, and he'd find the two or three people he knew," the banker says. "He'd knock on their door and they would get scared. The whole thing didn't work."