The golden kids of Goldman Sachs | USAEMALL.com

One new AI venture to start: Donald Trump unveiled billions of dollars of private investment in a massive new artificial intelligence infrastructure venture backed by OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle.

In today’s newsletter:

• Goldman’s new generation of leaders

• Evergrande’s collapse ensnares luxury flats

• What’s next for TikTok?

The new guard at Goldman

Goldman Sachs has cemented its top leadership at the start of what Wall Street believes will be a new dawn in dealmaking under Donald Trump.

Days after inking $80mn retention awards for chief executive David Solomon and president John Waldron, Goldman has promoted a slate of executives to head some of its most important units — including its investment banking and trading businesses.

The investment bank is solidifying its top talent to stave off potential poaching from rivals as it prepares for what’s expected to be a bumper few years of takeover and initial public offering activity under Trump.

The new posts include trios of global heads for the bank’s equities, fixed- income and banking businesses, plus changes to the leadership of its international arm.

The promotions elevate a new guard at the bank. The equities division will be led by Erdit Hoxha, Cyril Goddeeris and Dmitri Potishko; and the fixed-income unit will be headed by Kunal Shah, Anshul Sehgal and Jason Brauth.

Meanwhile, the international banking franchise will be overseen by Kim Posnett, Matt McClure and Anthony Gutman.

Shah and Gutman will also assume the roles of co-chief executives of Goldman’s international business, taking the reins from Richard Gnodde.

He’ll take up the position of vice-chair, while François-Xavier de Mallmann will become chair of Goldman in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The promotions this week show that Goldman is trying to make sure that, in addition to Solomon and Waldron, its next rung of executives are also kept happy — and aren’t tempted to shop around their CVs, especially for roles in the lucrative and fast-growing private capital world.

The risk of poaching is top of mind here, especially if a new war for banking talent breaks out amid spiking deal volumes.

The bank has in recent years lost partners and other top talent to the likes of TCW, Citadel Securities, Sixth Street and General Atlantic.

The new division heads are a handful of names that DD reckons are worth keeping an eye on and come on the heels of Solomon’s revamp of the bank’s wealth and asset management divisions last year.

The star of some of Goldman’s “next gen” will probably rise further as they consolidate their grip on the bank’s key units.

The luxury London flats caught up in Evergrande

Dealings between the global super-rich who park their wealth in London real estate and the agents that do the more mundane work of managing their properties for them are usually quite discreet.

But the collapse of the giant Chinese developer Evergrande has thrown one such arrangement into the spotlight — and, for a time, into a legal grey area.

JLL, the US-listed property group, has been providing letting and management services for nearly three dozen luxury London apartments that are ultimately owned by Ding Yumei, the ex-wife of Evergrande’s co-founder Hui Ka Yan.

(She owns the flats, on Carnation Way in south London’s Nine Elms, through five companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, according to court filings, and lives in one of them.)

Hui, once China’s richest man, is now being held in the country on suspicion of involvement in “illegal crimes”.

A Hong Kong court ordered Evergrande to be wound up a year ago, and its liquidators, the Alvarez & Marsal duo Eddie Middleton and Tiffany Wong, are battling to recover funds for creditors. Judges in London and Hong Kong have frozen Ding’s assets.

Ding is “amongst the principal beneficiaries” of “what is understood to be the largest financial fraud to have emerged from mainland China”, court filings from the liquidators say.

All of that left JLL in a tricky position. The property group made clear that it was unwilling to keep managing the properties unless a court said it was allowed to do so, according to filings.

Happily for JLL and its business, a London court has now obliged.

What now for TikTok?

TikTok has endured a lot of whiplash in recent months. And even more so in just the last few days.

The social media platform, owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, went dark in the US on Saturday evening as a federal ban loomed over the popular video app.

But a day later — after its users began grieving on rival sites — the platform said it was coming back online as Donald Trump promised to ensure companies that host and distribute the app wouldn’t be held liable for violating the US ban.

Then, on Monday, shortly after Trump was sworn in, he went a step further by issuing an executive order that prohibits the US attorney-general from enforcing the ban for 75 days.

That gives the White House some time to evaluate the app, and any potential national security risks, which led to the federal ban.

Meanwhile, Wall Street and Silicon Valley are buzzing with rumours about what US company — if any — might be interested in bidding on TikTok.

Though there are massive hurdles to navigate such as antitrust and whether anyone outside of China truly can have control over the algorithm.

Of course, Elon Musk has his own thoughts on the ban, partially coloured by his ownership of X, a social media rival.

While he opposes banning the video app on free-speech grounds, “the current situation where TikTok is allowed to operate in America, but X is not allowed to operate in China, is unbalanced”, he posted on Sunday.

He was blunt: “Something needs to change.”

Job moves

• Warburg Pincus plans to bulk up its operations in the Middle East, with Mumbai-based managing director Viraj Sawhney, who leads the firm’s cross-border services practice, set to soon move to the region, a source confirmed to DD.

• Ropes & Gray has hired David Harris as a partner with the firm’s M&A practice. He joins from Paul Weiss.

• X has hired John Stoll as the director of its recently launched news partnerships programme. He previously worked at Ridgely Walsh, and before that was with the Wall Street Journal.

• Angeles Equity Partners has hired Chetan Bhandari as head of capital markets. He joins from Greenhill & Co., and previously worked at Lazard.

Smart reads

Fugitive prince A man with an obscure claim to a royal fortune made a deal to help regain his crown, FT Magazine writes. It cost him more than he could imagine.

Crossing a line Before taking office, Trump had cultivated a following of crypto acolytes who saw him as their saviour, the Atlantic writes. But the president’s new cryptocurrency is even too brazen for some of his supporters.

Carry points in banking? Asset managers are ascendant on Wall Street, Lex writes, meaning banks including Goldman are paying like PE and rearranging the org chart.

News round-up

US banks in ‘go-mode’ under Donald Trump, says JPMorgan executive (FT)

Hedge fund Saba settles with BlackRock funds after activist battle (FT)

Natixis owner says Europe’s standalone asset managers cannot be ‘global champions’ (FT)

Thames Water faces fresh legal challenge over £3bn creditor loan (FT)

Ministers force out chair of UK’s competition regulator (FT)

Abrdn boss Jason Windsor defends company name as flows turn positive (FT)

Brevan Howard cuts 7% of hedge fund trading staff globally (Bloomberg)