What does the world outside the fortresses of high finance know of Goldman Sachs? That it is a potent institution, trading and dealmaking in every market that matters to the global economy; that its executives are very rich and its alumni, including the former prime minister Rishi Sunak and the Canadian leader Mark Carney, glide effortlessly into top jobs in public life; and that it was once described (by Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi) as ‘a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity’. 

To conspiracy theorists and anticapitalists, all this makes Goldman seem overmighty, sinister and scary. If the British banking house of Barings was known in the 19th century as Europe’s ‘sixth great power’, so Goldman today seems to outgun most governments. And that reputation is reinforced by a shared reluctance among its partners and executives, past and present, to talk to writers who seek to expose its ethos and modus operandi. 

Lisa Endlich’s Goldman Sachs: The Culture of Success (1999), timed to coincide with the firm’s launch on the stock exchange after a century as a private partnership, was diligent but respectful. William D Cohan’s Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World (2011) was a more determined