Goldman Sachs' board has discussed handing the CEO job from David Solomon to president and chief operating officer John Waldron, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Waldron, 57, joined the bank in 2000 and has been Solomon's No. 2 since October 2018 — the same month Solomon became CEO. No definitive timeline exists, and any handover would still need board approval.
If it happens, it would likely land around the end of 2027 or in 2028. Solomon would reportedly stay on as executive chairman for one to two years after the transition.
A succession that's been building for years
Waldron's path has been visible for a while. In 2025 the board added him as a director and handed him a retention bonus — a move Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo has linked directly to his expected rise. Mayo also doesn't expect a strategy rewrite if Waldron takes over, noting the two men have been driving Goldman's priorities together.
The operational side of that pairing is already on Waldron's plate. He's led OneGS 3.0, the bank's AI-driven efficiency plan, according to Goldman's proxy statement. A staff memo in October 2025 capped headcount growth through year-end and flagged limited role cuts.
Where crypto fits — or doesn't
Waldron's public comments lately have been about AI, not digital assets. But his record on crypto isn't blank. Back in March 2021 he said client demand for Bitcoin was rising and that Goldman was looking for a compliant way to serve it. Around then the bank revived its crypto trading desk, began dealing Bitcoin futures for clients, and was weighing a Bitcoin ETF.
That was five years ago. The industry Waldron would inherit looks different. Banks are now weighing stablecoins and tokenization, and Goldman already has a foot in that door: in July 2025, Bank of New York Mellon agreed to use Goldman's blockchain-based Digital Asset Platform, GS DAP, to track ownership of select money market funds.
The handover isn't done
Nothing is approved. The board still has to sign off on the plan, and the bank says there's no definitive timeline. That leaves a wide gap between a reported boardroom discussion and an actual transition.
For now, the concrete marker is Waldron's day job: running OneGS 3.0 and the bank's operations while the board works through the succession question. The next hard signal would be a formal board decision — or Solomon setting a date.
