Latest Interviews
Showing 1–15 of 16 transcripts.
Clear all filters- Goldman Sachs32 min
Private Credit Concerns in Context
Alex Blostein, Vivek Bantwal, Allison Nathan
Amidst a sentiment shift driven by opacity and liquidity concerns, Goldman Sachs analysts project that private credit assets will avoid a systemic crisis despite a 15% annual growth slowdown and concentrated software exposure. While retail investors face potential redemptions constrained by fund caps, institutional direct lending remains insulated by conservative Loan-to-Value ratios and a 9–10% spread cushion that has yet to produce significant defaults. The sector's resilience relies on distinguishing between high-quality borrowers and vulnerable single-B names, with market recovery anticipated as idle capital returns to attract more attractive covenant terms over the next two years.
- Goldman Sachs28 min
Europe’s Opportunity, AI, and Market Volatility with Goldman Sachs International's Co-CEOs
Anthony Gutman, Kunal Shah, Allison Nathan
Goldman Sachs navigates Middle East geopolitical instability while reinforcing its regional foothold through a new Riyadh wealth license and a $25 billion partnership with the Qatar Investment Authority. Strategically, the firm capitalizes on resilient Asian markets and European growth pockets in Spain and Poland, targeting infrastructure financing and private wealth expansion despite short-term currency volatility. Driven by robust corporate balance sheets and AI-fueled efficiency, leaders maintain a positive long-term economic outlook and anticipate continued M&A activity and capital market issuance as markets differentiate between structural trends and event-driven shocks.
- Goldman Sachs27 min
Implications of an “Americas First” Foreign Policy
Hal Brands, Mauricio Claver-Carone, Allison Nathan
The Trump administration has announced a 2026 foreign policy shift known as the "Donro Doctrine," which prioritizes direct resource control and territorial expansion in the Western Hemisphere over traditional diplomatic stability. This neo-mercantilist strategy targets specific outcomes including the strategic takeover of Venezuelan oil, the acquisition of Greenland, and the renegotiation of USMCA to favor U.S. equity over trade, while actively countering Chinese and Russian influence through military and economic coercion. Critics warn that this move toward hard power and border redrawing risks eroding the post-1945 international order, potentially triggering global instability and market volatility as U.S. forces intercept shadow fleets and intervene in regional sovereignty disputes.
- Goldman Sachs30 min
From Assets to Alpha: David Kostin on US Equities
Goldman Sachs Chief U.S. Equity Strategist David Koston forecasts a 20%+ return for U.S. stocks in 2026 based on economic stability and earnings growth, while distinguishing between the fundamentally grounded public AI market and a potentially bubble-ridden private sector driven by reflexive capital inflows. Despite projecting long-term annualized returns of 6.5% over the next decade, Koston identifies immediate opportunities in undervalued healthcare, stable middle-income consumer sectors, and AI-driven revenue generators as institutional funds struggle to outperform benchmarks. As Koston transitions from the Chief U.S. Equity Strategist role to an Advisory Director position in 2026, his successor Ben Snyder will inherit a market characterized by high concentration risk and shifting investor behavior from asset accumulation to alpha generation.
- Goldman Sachs21 min
The Fed's Tightrope: Inflation, Labor, and the Path Ahead
Rob Kaplan, Allison Nathan, Robert Kaplan
Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan warns that the Federal Reserve faces a difficult December decision on interest rates as conflicting signals from tariffs, immigration uncertainty, and recent government shutdowns complicate the labor market outlook. With inflation running above target and structural mismatches limiting the efficacy of monetary policy, Kaplan argues that immediate cuts carry risks and suggests waiting for clearer data on 2026 growth drivers like AI infrastructure and tax incentives. While political pressure for lower rates exists, Kaplan maintains that the Fed's independent culture remains robust, though he anticipates potential shifts toward long-term bond purchases to manage the balance sheet.
- Goldman Sachs25 min
How Goldman Sachs’ John Waldron is navigating “a more uncertain time”
Goldman Sachs reports that the U.S. economy remains resilient against recession fears despite April tariff shocks, though persistent fiscal deficits and policy uncertainty continue to constrain corporate capital investment and global capital allocation. The firm has moderated its own risk positioning while anticipating a resurgence in capital markets activity this summer, provided no further exogenous policy disruptions occur. Leadership is simultaneously pivoting toward operational excellence and technology infrastructure to stabilize revenue streams and navigate a volatile environment defined by shifting interest rates and tariff trajectories.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
AI Exchanges: How tech giants are navigating the AI landscape
Eric Sheridan, Allison Nathan, George Lee
Major technology giants are sustaining record capital expenditures through 2025 to solidify AI infrastructure dominance, with Goldman Sachs projecting this peak intensity to slow in 2026 despite tariff-related cost increases. Executives from Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon characterize the sector as being in the early innings of a third computing shift, prioritizing defensive positioning and infrastructure monetization over immediate application-layer profitability. Although investor sentiment remains bifurcated by macroeconomic risks, current valuations reflect a strategic reliance on these incumbents' unprecedented balance sheet scale to navigate the transition from raw training to commercial deployment.
- Goldman Sachs29 min
AI Exchanges: CIO Marco Argenti on the future of AI in the workplace
Marco Argenti, George Lee, Allison Nathan
A Goldman Sachs-led panel analyzes the rapid acceleration of AI reasoning models against the persistent "value gap" created by legacy systems and the behavioral friction of retraining human workflows. While "de novo" enterprises advance faster due to agile structures, the firm is actively cultivating "mindful disruptors" and embedding specific cultural judgment into agents to manage risks like hallucinations and data exfiltration. The dialogue concludes that future success relies on a hybrid workforce where AI agents provide elastic capacity and mechanical execution, leaving high-level creativity and professional oversight to human leaders.
- Goldman Sachs22 min
AI Exchanges: Will falling costs drive new opportunities?
Allison Nathan, George Lee, Kim Posnett
Host George Lee and guests analyze how DeepSeek's low-cost AI model challenges the economic viability of massive U.S. tech capital expenditures while triggering a shift in consensus from data scarcity to power availability as the primary industry constraint. Despite short-term market volatility, the panel highlights record CapEx commitments from hyperscalers and emerging enterprise adoption trends, including Goldman Sachs' internal AI tools and synthetic data markets, which collectively suggest a rapid transition toward autonomous AI agents and multi-gigawatt infrastructure needs. The discussion concludes with a bullish long-term outlook, predicting that declining computing costs will fuel new use cases and accelerate workforce productivity even as the sector navigates immediate supply chain bottlenecks.
- Goldman Sachs20 min
Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David Solomon on the business environment, AI, and private credit
On January 27, 2025, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and host Allison Nathan discussed a macroeconomic outlook defined by regulatory optimism alongside persistent uncertainties in immigration, trade, and energy policy. Solomon projected a robust 2025 recovery for capital markets and M&A activity while highlighting artificial intelligence as a critical productivity driver, even as he flagged geopolitical instability and complex inflation dynamics as key risks. The firm further emphasized its strategy to deploy excess capital buffers through private credit expansion and asset management growth, contingent on the appointment of key financial regulators and the resolution of stress testing ambiguities.
- Goldman Sachs29 min
Power surge: AI, renewable energy, and the future of electricity
Carly Davenport, Alberto Gandolfi, Brian Singer, Allison Nathan
Global power demand is surging due to generative AI and data center expansion, with US growth forecast to accelerate to a 2.5% CAGR by 2030 while Europe faces similar pressure from electrification plans. Goldman Sachs predicts an "all-of-the-above" generation strategy dominated by natural gas and renewables to support an estimated $50 billion in new US infrastructure investment, even as nuclear adoption shifts toward direct power purchase agreements and small modular reactors. This transition faces significant bottlenecks including multi-year permitting delays, equipment shortages, and grid modernization needs, positioning the sector for a generational investment boom over the next decade.
- Goldman Sachs37 min
What’s ahead for retail: how retail CEOs are navigating a more complex environment
Tim Ingrassia, Vishaal Rana, Ted Decker, Dave Kimbell, Allison Nathan
Goldman Sachs analysts and retail leaders including Home Depot's Ted Decker and Ulta Beauty's Dave Kimball characterize 2024 as a pivotal shift where micro-level corporate strategies outweigh macroeconomic trends in driving performance. Private equity firms are increasingly targeting defensive sectors like collision repair while navigating debt constraints, forcing a consolidation of single-banner models and a reevaluation of Direct-to-Consumer valuation models that have shed 97% of their 2021 peak value. As interest rates remain elevated and geopolitical risks introduce new logistics costs, the market is prioritizing sustainable profitability over revenue growth, with physical stores re-emerging as critical drivers of customer lifetime value compared to digital-only channels.
- Goldman Sachs26 min
2024: the year of elections
Richard Haass, Timothy Garton Ash, Allison Nathan
Richard Haass and Timothy Garten-Ash analyze 2024 as a pivotal global year marked by democratic backsliding and a surge of right-wing populism across Europe and the United States. They argue that the U.S. presidential election serves as the decisive geopolitical event, where the policy divergence between an alliance-first Biden and an isolationist Trump will fundamentally shape the security architecture of NATO and the trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. These shifts carry profound implications for European integration, Taiwan's defense, and the United Kingdom's future relations with the EU, as Western uncertainty may embolden adversaries like Putin and undermine the credibility of international commitments.
- Goldman Sachs35 min
Uncharted territory: Navigating a ‘geopolitical recession’
Jared Cohen, Ian Bremmer, Allison Nathan
Former State Department official Jared Cohen and political analyst Ian Bremmer describe a global "geopolitical recession" where domestic political pressures in the US and China have eroded traditional governance, creating a credibility deficit that forces all sectors into the crossfire of great power rivalry. While the Middle East conflict has isolated Washington and empowered Iran, strategic stabilization has emerged in US-China relations driven by Beijing's economic fragility, leaving a leadership void that can only be partially filled by climate cooperation. The speakers advise businesses to abandon pure efficiency for "intellectual efficiency," targeting geopolitical swing states like India and the Gulf nations to navigate an era defined by fragmented trade blocs and supply chain weaponization.
- Goldman Sachs20 min
M&A in 2024: Navigating opportunities and challenges
Stephan Feldgoise, Mark Sorrell, Allison Nathan
Following a 2023 period defined by valuation misalignments and high interest rates, the M&A market is experiencing a surge in dialogue and specific sector activity driven by resilient natural resources, healthcare, and stable industrial performance. While private equity deal volume has contracted due to financing costs, corporate buyers have maintained robust activity and public-to-private transactions have reached record levels to address pressure on portfolio monetization. Looking ahead to 2024, experts anticipate a normalization of interest rates and reduced inflation will catalyze a rebound in technology deals and strategic spinoffs, with international activity expected to trail the US market by several months.