Why you should not get impressed while meeting a bank VP or MD
In a country or a company, a vice-president is a top job, the title-holder is most likely No. 2 after the big boss, and the only one with that grand designation. In a bank, a VP can be...well, one of 12,000! Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs VP, briefly became world famous in March 2012 when he quit the giant investment bank via a scathing oped piece on his employer in The New York Times. But more revealingly, Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's boss, had reportedly said he didn't understand the fuss since Smith was just one of 12,000 VPs in the bank. US media then estimated that an astounding 40% of Goldman staff were VPs. And, get this, Goldman was also estimated to have 2,400 managing directors! For the non-banking corporate world, a managing director is of course often the big boss or the second-biggest boss — a company has just one MD. Goldman's fancy designation party is pretty much the norm across investment banking and banking everywhere, including in India — banks are ...
