Competitors of Goldman Sachs’ market- leading activist defence advisory business have seized on an opportunity to snatch away corporate clients, after the head of the unit quit to join the hedge fund Elliott Management.
The gamekeeper-turned-poacher move by Steven Barg, a Goldman partner who advised chief executives and boards on how to fend off attacks from activist hedge funds, is regarded as rare across the industry, after his resignation last week.
Since then, Goldman’s competitors have approached some of Mr Barg’s top clients to pitch their own business and make reassur
ances that their bankers will not jump to an activist fund, according to people with knowledge of the conversations.
One rival banker said Mr Barg’s departure was “a great opportunity” to make inroads into Goldman’s sizeable book of business, which remains the largest on Wall Street. Evercore is its closest rival, while Morgan Stanley and Lazard are among the other banks with notable activist defence advisory businesses.
Goldman’s shareholder advisory and activist defence group is one of the investment bank’s most sensitive businesses and a cornerstone in its efforts to solidify trust with companies who may then use its services for lucrative investment banking work.
The top global investment banks eschew advising activists to demonstrate their trustworthiness to corporate clients.
As the date for delivery of Turkey’s order of a Russian S-400 air defence system drew closer, president Recep Tayyip Erdogan faced louder and louder warnings. If the shipment went ahead, US officials and analysts cautioned, then Donald Trump would have no choice but to impose sanctions that could wreak havoc on the fragile Turkish economy.
But in recent weeks, 30 planeloads of radars, missile launchers and support vehicles have arrived at an air base near Ankara, Turkey’s capital, and the threatened sanctions have not materialised. It has taken everyone by surprise.
“No one expected this outcome” says Asli Aydintasbas, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Erdogan took a huge gamble and it paid off — for now.”
Observers are now asking whether Turkey, a Nato member, has got away with its bold decision to strike a $2.5bn defence deal with the alliance’s historical foe — or whether the fallout has merely been postponed.
The picture is muddied by the chaotic policymaking that has become a defining feature of the Trump administration. Last summer, the US president was engaged in a Twitter dispute with Ankara over Andrew Brunson, a detained US pastor, that pushed the country to the brink of a financial crisis. A year later, he was stepping in to defend Mr Erdogan’s decision to buy the S-400 because the US would not sell its Patriot system to Ankara.
Yet even if Mr Erdogan has the US president on his side, it might not be enough to shield Turkey from the consequences of what some in Washington fear is the start of a strategic shift towards Moscow.
The Pentagon has already kicked Ankara out of the Us-led F-35 fighter jet programme, risking long-term repercussions for the Turkish armed
