Longtime Goldman Sachs banker Julian Salisbury is leaving the firm to become co-chief investment officer at Sixth Street Partners, according to a blog he authored on LinkedIn on Friday.
Salisbury was Goldman’s global co-head of asset management for two years until a large-scale reorganization shifted him into the role of CIO of asset and wealth management in December, a role in which he kept watch over the firm’s more than $2.7 trillion invested assets.
Next, he will work alongside current CIO Alan Waxman and CEO Joshua Easterly as co-CIO at Sixth Street, managing its portfolio of roughly $65 billion in assets.
Waxman and Easterly are both Goldman alum, as are some of the firm’s other eight co-founders. Many are alum of Goldman’s special-situations group, and Salisbury will be no exception. He led European operations from 2008 to 2013 and global operations from 2013 to 2019, according to his LinkedIn.
“Julian is a Goldman careerist who worked his way through the ranks,” said former Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported on Salisbury’s transition. “He is a sharp investor and a natural leader of other investors.”
Salisbury’s departure is one of several recent executive departures at Goldman, according to the Journal, which reported that six of the 11 partners named in a company memo early last year related to the asset management overhaul have left the company. Salisbury is one of those partners.
Tak Murata, co-head of Asia Pacific private investing, is also leaving the bank, according to the Financial Times.
Head of Asset and Wealth Management Marc Nachmann told the Financial Times on Friday, “When you look at what’s happened over the past 12 months and how we’ve reformulated the business, it wasn’t surprising to the partners in the business that people have left.”
Despite being a part of a growing list of defectors, Salisbury did not speak ill of Goldman, noting in his blog he’s “confident in what the leadership team can go on to deliver in the years to come,” and that he “look[s] forward to watching the asset management business and the firm go from strength to strength.”
In his LinkedIn blog, Salisbury said he plans to join Sixth Street in 2024, following his “first meaningful break from work in 28 years.”
“While the decision to leave Goldman Sachs was a difficult one, I couldn’t be more excited for what we’re going to accomplish at Sixth Street,” he wrote.
