All right. Well, good morning.
Good morning.
Thanks for coming, David. I really appreciate you being here.
Delighted to be here. Isn't this better than being in New York and, you know, at the end of February?
Without a doubt.
Absolutely.
Without a doubt. I know it's something that you've made a regular appearance with, so we're really happy to see you here with us after the transition from the long heritage that Credit Suisse had over to UBS, so-
Delighted to be here.
Man needs no introduction, but David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs. Of course, I'm Brennan Hawken, Capital Markets Analyst here at UBS. I'd like to jump right in, if that's okay, David?
Sure, absolutely.
So you've been now CEO for about five years. Interested in maybe taking a step back and reflecting on your experience. What are some of the big accomplishments, maybe some of the big challenges, and what you've learned from that?
Sure. Well, it's been five and a half years, and it's certainly been an interesting five and a half years. And I'd say the... You know, there's always, in these jobs, and running, you know, companies and platforms like this, there are always challenges. There are always headwinds and tailwinds, and they ebb and flow. You know, I think the pandemic was a real outlier event that was hard to anticipate, and I think, we all learned and had, you know, and had kind of disruptions of extremes from the experience of pandemic that are different than what, you know, anybody would expect.
But if you put that aside, I kinda look at the body of work that the broad leadership team has accomplished over the course of the last five and a half years, and we feel very, very good about it. It hasn't been a straight line, but we set out to really think about how we could set the firm up to grow, expand our franchise, and be positioned very well to provide solid returns for shareholders on both an absolute and a relative basis. And I look at what we've done, you know, over that period of time, and I think we've made a lot of progress.
If you go back to our first Investor Day in 2020, we said that we were gonna invest in our core business of banking and markets because we thought there were opportunities to strengthen the client franchise, to take share, and to grow, and we had four other places that we were gonna focus. We're gonna focus on asset management, we're gonna focus on wealth management, we're gonna focus on transaction banking, and we were gonna focus on consumer businesses.
And we were also gonna work to run the firm more efficiently. And if you look over the course of the last 4 years, we've done some real work on the cost structure of the firm that I think has paid real benefits. Now, along the way, we significantly increased our wallet share over 350 basis points in banking and markets. We grew that franchise. We've grown our ability to finance our clients very significantly. We've compounded the financing revenues in our FICC and equities business associated with financing our clients by 15% compounded since 2019, which has obviously put more durable revenue into that business. And I look at our banking and markets franchise, I think we're the clear leader broadly in that business, and I think we've got more room to continue to take share and strengthen that franchise.
I think we also, through our One GS operating ethos, materially strengthened the nature of our client relationships and the way clients see us, which I think has also helped. We made a lot of progress in asset management and wealth management. We've made progress in transaction banking. We decided, and this was, you know, I think, a decision that we, we feel very good about, that the journey we're on to consumer was not working the way we thought it would, and that the world had changed, and so we made an aggressive decision to narrow that materially. We've made a lot of progress on that over the course of the last couple of years. So the firm is now set up with two great businesses that we have a right to win in.
We're winning, or we have a right to win even more in, through banking and markets, and Asset and Wealth Management . And I think the firm is positioned incredibly well. And if you look at the performance over that time, you know, when I look ahead for the next three to five years, I feel great about the way the firm's positioned. I feel great about our client franchise, and I think we're gonna continue to deliver good returns for shareholders and grow the franchise. And so I feel good about it. Now, it's not been, you know, it's not been a perfect journey-
Sure
... but there is no perfect journey when you're dealing in the real world. And so I think we're in a very good place, and I feel very good about it.
That's good.
Yeah.
That's great. The outlook, when you think about the macro environment, it's been a lot more resilient than expected. To be honest, I feel like in this macro environment, it's been really hard to, like, track the baseball, right? Like, understand exactly what's happening. What's your perspective on the macro environment, and how does that impact the way that you're operating the firm?
Yeah, well, I think the, I think the thing that we got wrong in terms of the resiliency is we all appreciated the amount of fiscal stimulus, but it's kinda hard to really understand, if you spend $6-$7 trillion, the kind of lingering impact that has on, on money in the system, and it's, it's had a big, big impact. You know, I'd say that, that overall, I mean, the world is set up for a, you know, for a soft landing. The market certainly perceives there's a very, very high delta to a soft landing. You know, my, my own view is it's a little bit more uncertain than that, and you would have to expect that given, you know, given the extreme disruptions associated with the pandemic and the normalization. My own observations would be the service economy is still very strong.
The upper half of the economy here in the United States is still very strong. The lower tier of the economy, I think consumer behaviors are softening a little bit. You know, it's interesting when you listen to the political narrative, you know, there's a lot of talk about core inflation, but at the end of the day, what do Americans care about? Their gas, their food, and their housing. And while the velocity of inflation has certainly slowed, prices are materially higher-
Yeah
... than they were four years ago. And so if you're an average American, you're asking the question, you know, "What's my purchasing power feel like today versus four years ago?" That purchasing power, you know, feels, you know, more strained. And as I've talked to a bunch of CEOs that operate businesses that would have good insight into, you know, what I'll call, you know, more paycheck-to-paycheck kind of spending behaviors, I think that in the last few months, you see a pattern of those behaviors tightening up, which means that lower part of the economy is a little bit softer. I think the world is more fragile. We have three geopolitical kinda hot spots at the moment. You know, that has to be a headwind to global growth. That has to put some inflationary pressure into the overall ecosystem.
So I, I just think we're operating pretty well, but just with a higher level of uncertainty that the market's pricing in. You've seen. You know, I did not understand earlier this month, in fact, when I was on TV, it's hard to imagine it was just a month ago, when I was on TV in Davos a month ago, the consensus was for 7 interest rate cuts, and I said, "I see, I just don't understand this." So now we're down to 4, as kind of a, you know, a consensus move. And so we keep, you know, we keep pushing that out. And so I just think a little slower, a little stickier, a little more sluggish. But no, you know, we could have a recession, we might not. I'm not gonna, you know, 50/50, or 70/30, or 30/70.
You know, I'm not smart enough. But the market is way weighted to a very soft landing, and when you look in the pattern of facts the last three or four years, it's hard for me to see it's gonna be that simple.
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's fair.
We all use the forward curve as an input, but it feels like the forward curve's been wrong.
Well, the forward curve can change too, very quickly.
Of course.
Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely.
So, given that perspective-
... and your view, you know, what's your view on the opportunity set for your largest businesses? You know, FICC, equity-
Yeah
-and investment.
Well, I think you have to be very-- You know, I think you have to be very careful, and it's just very interesting to me. People live in a lens of kind of looking through the rearview mirror. So even though it's been 15 years since the financial crisis, there's this view of kind of looking at that-
Yeah
... because that was a significant speed bump. But assuming that if you have any kind of an economic slowdown or something like that, you go through, you know, a real financial, you know, turbulence. The economy could just slow down.
Sure.
Investors will keep repositioning in a slower economy.
Yeah.
By the way, investors are repositioning a bunch right now because 2 minutes ago it was 7 interest rate cuts; now it's 4 interest rate cuts. So you know, the velocity of activity is still pretty good. The place where the velocity of activity has been slow has been in investment banking. But I just highlight, if you're a student of this over, you know, 25 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, you don't really get extended periods with anemic investment banking activity, because at the end of the day, people have to accept values in the market, financing costs.
Right.
They have to run their business, they have to raise capital. And so we really, in the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023, ran it super, super anemic investment banking activity. It's gotten better, but it's not back to kind of 10-year averages.
Sure.
I don't see any reason why the expectation over the next three years shouldn't look more like ten-year averages. I'm not saying that it should look like top quartile-
Just ten-year averages. At ten-year averages, there's a lot of upside for us in our business.
Sure.
And so I think we're, I think we're probably more correlated to that than, you know, than any other firm. So I think we're gonna see a better operating environment for our core business. That doesn't mean every quarter, every minute, but I think we've seen it already from kind of the lows in the first half of 2023. And my expectation is those businesses will look more normal, and, you know, we have $ billions of upside in the normalization of those businesses.
Sure. And is that mostly on investment banking, or is that also on the equities and the FICC side too?
Well, the equities and FICC side have run pretty well.
Right.
You know, we continue to grow those businesses through our financing activity-
Right
... and we see more, you know, upside in that. You know, intermediation can be more volatile, but the world's very dynamic. And you know, one of the things I just highlight is, you know, intermediation activities aren't going away, and the bigger players have secured a stronger position.
Sure
... you know, in those businesses and have the capability to serve clients. And so you know, you know, I think that you know, you can look at kind of performance in those businesses, and you'll see ups and downs.
But I think that, you know, the performance of those businesses over the last few years, you know, is a reasonable, you know, range of base for us.
This is the uncertainty that's in the market, as we talked about. We said the forward curve, right? Initially cutting, putting a bunch of cuts, now less. I mean, that's got to help the intermediation business a little bit.
You see, when things change, when the view changes, you see more intermediation activity.
Right.
You know, FICC's interesting because FICC does have some countercyclicality to it. When times get really tough-
Right
... FICC does have some countercyclicality to it. But look, these are big, big businesses. They are very, very diverse in their inputs. You know, one year you might have more commodities activity, one year you might have more interest rate activity, one year you've got more structured finance and mortgage activity. But they balance out, and when you look at them... I mean, this is one of the things we tried to put forward at our earnings discussion at the end of the Q1. It's not like these businesses start at zero every year.
Sure.
Okay, and, you know, we're wondering whether, you know, the lights are gonna come on. There is a base of activity-
Yeah
... you know, in these businesses every single year. And then our job is when it's available, to make sure we capture, you know, on a relative basis, more of the share of that activity. We've, we've got a very good track record of doing that pretty consistently.
Yeah. And that is a perfect segue into the this durable news that you guys put out here. I'd love to drill down on that and because that caught a lot of attention, and investors are wondering how to think about that. You know, can you elaborate or maybe give a little more color around how you guys define the durable revenue?
Sure, sure. And look, it's one of the things we've been talking to investors about and trying to take feedback on how we can communicate. We think we've increased the durability of our revenue business, of the revenues in our business. And, you know, we've strengthened our earnings, and I think there's, you know, the lens on, you know, the consistency of our ability, you know, to generate profits in our businesses. You know, we've still got to do a better job kind of finding ways to explain it. So we took a stab at it this last quarter, and, you know, we started with first, you know, our durable revenues. We have grown our durable revenues, which is management fees and financing fees, which everybody would agree are durable, and I think are now up to kind of mid-40s.
I'm gonna say, off the top of my head, the number I remember is 43, so don't hold me to that exactly. Where's Carey? 43, is that right?
The two together.
Yeah, the two together. No, the more durable, you know, management fees, financing fees, et cetera. $20 billion. $20 billion, 43%, okay? I mean, I can't remember all the numbers.
I can remember some. $20 billion. When you look at that, we've grown that, we've compounded that at 13% since 2019. Growing our management fees and our financing activity, we've compounded that by 13% since 2019.... Everybody looks at that and says, "Okay, we get that." That's a big chunk, $20 billion.
Right.
The next thing we said is, "Okay, we have these things that people consider as more volatile, like intermediation activity, capital markets activity, M&A revenues, but they don't start at zero every year.
Sure.
What's a way that we can present the base to people?
Sure.
We said, "Let's look at the low for each one of those activities for the last 10 years, and let's assume that every one of those activities in the same year was at their 10-year low," which, by the way, has never happened since we've been a public company, and the chance of that happening, I think-
Sure
... is very, very low. But if you take that, okay, and you look at that, that adds another $14 billion of revenue. It takes us up to $34 billion of revenue, and so that's close to 70%, you know, of our base revenue. And so when you look at that and you move forward, then what's the balance? Well, the balance every year is it's not the 10-year low. There's more M&A fees, or there's more capital markets activity, or there's more intermediation.
Right.
And that can vary, and we're very, very good at working with our clients, having leading share and capturing what's out there. And so we're very focused on continuing to grow management fees, continuing to grow the financing activity. The market will tee up for us what's available in capital markets activity, et cetera, but these are big businesses that don't start at zero every year. There's a real base.
Right.
And so people, you know, people appreciated that and thought that that was a good way to kind of look at a significant portion, two-thirds of the revenues of the firm, and say, "This is a real solid base to build off of.
Sure, sure. And the financing revenues is something that you guys break out sort of uniquely. So I'd love to hear from your perspective, the equities and the FICC financing revenues, what are the drivers of that? And maybe just share-
Well, yeah, the drivers of it are growth in the world, and when you think about... You know, many of you in this room is clients. Okay, you have to finance your activities, and when you think about how many firms are out there that can truly finance, you know, what, you know, what you want to do, there aren't a lot that have the scale and the capability, you know, to truly finance. You look at the prime business.
You know, prime is not a business. You know, people who talk about getting involved in credit intermediation or this and that, you know, prime is not a business that you can just, you know, have a, you know, a multi-strap platform, or somebody say, "Hey, let's get involved in the prime business." There are only a handful of firms that, on a global basis, can truly, you know, provide that service-
Sure
... you know, to the big, you know, the big institutional community. And so, I think that scale players have an enormous advantage in these activities. And, you know, I think we're well-positioned to continue, for our important clients, to drive our capability to finance them, and it's just not something that the firm had focused on. I mean, you have to remember, we weren't a bank.
Right.
We really weren't a bank.
Right. Right.
you know, we're now a bank. Now we're a different bank than other banks. I think we've got real differentiating factors in terms of who we are, but banks, you know, should lend money, and, you know, what better place for us to lend money and generate NIM than financing our clients in market activity, where we think we have as good an understanding of that activity as anybody in the world?
Sure. No, I know my, my model goes back to when the November year-end was the reality.
I remember that November year-end. I wish we had kept it. I mean, it was awfully nice to go home for Christmas with everything done, packed, and over.
Right.
As opposed to be kind of working through Christmas on all those wonderful things we all do at the end of the year.
Sure. Of course. The prime, I think, you know, most people recognize Goldman's absolutely a leader in PB . The FICC financing is one thing that I thought was interesting, and in the breakout sessions at your Investor Day, I attended that. I was surprised to learn that actually some of the drivers are a lot of the secular trends that we talk about within private credit, all of that, all of that.
All that has to be financed.
Right.
Okay, now we're a big private credit player, too, and we talked about that, too.
$130 billion of private credit assets, but all that has to be financed.
Okay? There are different, different ways to finance it, and we're just very well-positioned, you know, to catch tailwind on that secular growth.
Right. Yeah, no. To me, I think that's underappreciated, so thanks for touching on that. You guys have been committed to the through-the-cycle mid-teens returns. So could you unpack some of the drivers about what's gonna get you there? That actually got a lot of attention coming out of the Q4.
Yeah. I, I think we've really simplified. I think one of the things... You know, we went on this journey, we laid out a plan, we had some growth areas, but I think we've really simplified where we are. And we have two big, you know, core businesses. One, where we're a clear leader, the business has obviously, you know, performed very, very well on both an absolute and a relative basis over a long period of time, and that's Global Banking and Markets. We've now got it set up in a way where we can disclose it to you so that you can really understand it and compare it to other people's businesses. And, you know, look, we, we really believe that that business, which is a significant portion of the firm, is a mid-teens business through this cycle.
You know, I don't think you have to look much further than the fact that last year was nowhere near kind of a mid-range performance-
Sure
... for that business, and it still returned over 12%. And so, you know, through the cycle, we think it's a mid-teens business. We're committed to that. We believe we can deliver on that. And we think, you know, in the coming years we'll give more, you know, more data for that.
Yeah.
but obviously, when investment banking is running at anemic 10-year lows-
Yeah
... you're not gonna see the average through-the-cycle performance for that, for that business. And then in the asset management business, we have a clear path to higher margins and mid-teens returns in that business. We've said clearly that's not aspirational for that business, and so if you think about for the next, you know, 5, 7 years through the rest of the decade, you know, our ability, you know, to continue to make progress broadly, you know, on that business, that's the firm. That's the firm. And, you know, we've got a little bit more work to do in, you know, the narrowing of the consumer, but that's the firm.
Right.
We have two big businesses that we're pretty confident can deliver mid-teens returns... that makes the firm mid-teens.
Sure.
It's, you know, the math's not that complicated, even for a guy like us.
Even for a guy like me.
Yeah.
Yeah. No, I know. I hear you. The GBM, the results, I think they're very, very clear. You guys have done a great job improving the returns. Could you unpack, though, a little bit on the asset and wealth side? You know, what are the drivers to improve the margin?
Sure.
You guys have CIE that you're selling down-
Sure.
Right. How should we think about it?
Oh, sure. And look through the lens. You know, when we started this journey 5 years ago, we had $5 billion in management fees. Now we have, you know, $10 billion in management fees. We've materially. You know, we've raised $250 billion of alternatives over the course of the last 5 years. We said on our Q4 earnings call, we expect to raise another $40 billion-$50 billion of alternatives this year. That doesn't-
Tough fundraising environment, too.
It's a tough fundraising environment, but we've got an extraordinary platform, and-
You guys have done great.
... we're pretty, you know, confident in our ability to continue to raise capital and alternatives. And by the way, it doesn't stop after this year.
Sure.
I mean, I think we're going to raise a lot of alternatives, you know, on a go-forward basis. We have a very, very strong platform. We've said we can grow our, our management fees, you know, high single digits. And so if you look at the compounding of management fees by, you know, by high single digits, and you look at that, that provides more margin, obviously, in. We've raised a lot of money that's not yet on fee, that has to be deployed.
Right.
We have $485 billion, I believe, of alternatives. Again, don't hold me to it exactly, but I think a little less than $300 billion, about $290 billion is on fee-
Okay
... you know, at the moment. And so, as we deploy more capital, you know, that also helps on that fee growth. And then we're taking the balance sheet down and the volatility of the balance sheet, which obviously affects margins, you know-
... short term. And so that combination of activities, we believe, can drive our margins to 25%. And if we drive the margins to 25% and you get the capital down, which we're doing-
... you get to mid-teens returns. Now, if you look at a business like that, of that scale, and you take a longer-term view, you should be able, you should be able to do more with it than that, and so we're very focused on that.
Right.
But I think we've made a lot of progress on the journey, and we'll continue to give you benchmarks as we go forward as to how that progress continues.
Yeah, and you, you guys aren't alone. A lot of the asset managers we cover are the margins, they're working to improve them, so it's, it's definitely a broad thing. You drilled down into when you mentioned the $40 billion-$50 billion in fundraising that you guys are looking to do. There's been a lot of attention on the fundraising around the alts, Blackstone, and Ares talk about it a lot. So which of the asset classes and areas that you are most excited about and think that there's the greatest demand from the investors?
Well, there's no question, everybody's talking about private credit. I think there's a lot of opportunity for private credit, and we feel we're a scaled player at $130 billion. But candidly, given, you know, when we started and we've been more of an institutional event fundraiser for the last 20 years, you know, we should have $300 billion of private credit. And so I think there's an enormous opportunity for this firm with its platform. And by the way, we have an enormous advantage given the integration of our firm and what we see. And so, you know, there's this narrative, the private credit disintermediating the banks. I think that narrative is overstated.
Sure.
But at the same point, we also sit in both worlds and have an ability to take advantage of the fact that we sit in both worlds, and I think that's very, very powerful for us. We're going to raise, in 2024, our ninth large-scale private equity fund. We'll launch what we call, Capital Partners 9, which is our next, next private equity fund, which will be a significant fundraising. We just completed an infrastructure fundraise. We raised our first two years ago, our first growth capital fund. It was a $5 billion first-time growth capital fund. There obviously will be Growth Capital 2 as we continue to deploy. I think one of the things that's interesting about our platform is our platform is, you know, truly global.
We're in private equity, growth equity, credit, infrastructure. There was some press this week about a partnership we had with a large capital allocator in Asian credit. So, you know, you look at that. When you, when you step back, there are very few people that have the full product capability-
Right
... with very strong performance and the full product capability. 90% of our alternatives funds are in the top 50% from a performance perspective. Very few people that have the performance across the full spectrum of products and have true global reach in terms of what they do. And so with big capital allocators, I think we're very well positioned to continue to grow-
Yeah
... provided we perform, and we're very focused on that.
Right. You touched on private credit is a very, very hot topic right now. You touched on it. Can you talk a little bit... I don't think everybody really fully understands your heritage in private credit. Maybe could you-
The firm's heritage?
The firm's heritage.
Yeah, the firm was very, the firm was very early in the private credit business because we created, 25 years ago, you know, one of, if not the first, large-scale mezzanine fund. And so, you know, we were operating with mezzanine funds that were five times larger than anybody else in the market and had been financing, you know, our clients that way, first with what we call, you know, Mezz Partners and then with Loan Partners, you know, the top of the capital structure. And, you know, we were just early in that business.
We, you know, we built it to a pretty significant business, but we didn't over the last seven or eight years, because of the Volcker Rule and the way we were scaling stuff on balance sheet as opposed to in fund form, we did not, over the last decade, you know, start early enough to scale it with institutional capital the way we should have. We've now been doing that the last five years and making a lot of progress.
Outstanding. Would love to transition to wealth management, you know, and spend a little time there. Given that you just sold PFM, what do you think the growth drivers are for wealth, and how are you thinking about that business?
Well, the ultra-high net worth business, where I think we have the leading franchise, is growing very, very nicely. And so, you know, if you look at, if you look at that, you look at that business, you know, that business has $1.3-$1.4 trillion of assets and over $8 billion of revenue, and it's, you know, it's growing north of 10% compounding over the course of the last five years, and it's a very, very fragmented business. .
We have a great brand and a leadership position. We're very, very focused on the service to our clients, and we have an ability to put more people on the field and grow that business, and a lot of room to do that all over the world. And so we've got a very, very focused plan to continue to invest in the growth of that, and we think we can continue to grow that business very, very nicely, organically-
you know, for the next 5+ years.
Right. So it's not the sale of PFM is not some sort of indication, that's not a strategic priority?
We, you know, we looked at PFM, and the thesis at the time was that if you, if you brought a platform like that in-
... and you rolled up other platforms-
You know, that you could scale it. But when we looked at it inside of Goldman Sachs, we just decided that the scale economics would not move the needle as much as deploying capital more quickly into the ultra high net worth business.
We would get better returns on that capital, and that was a better use of our energy, capital, and deployment. And so we... You know, again, it's one of the things we're trying to do very well, and I think this is, I think this is an important thing for anybody that's running a big scale business. You try things, sometimes they don't work. The hard thing is saying, "That's not working, let's turn it off-
Sure
because we see a better opportunity. And doing that as quickly as you can do that, being very, very unemotional, saying, "Okay, we tried that. We were wrong. We're gonna change it." And PFM is an example. We were wrong. We changed it. We didn't linger, we changed it, and that's giving us the flexibility to deploy more capital in growing, you know, the wealth management business in the ultra high net worth space, where we think we're very uniquely positioned.
Right. And, and given the ultra high net worth focus, then thinking about the alts conversation that we just had.
Well, that's... I mean, you know, alts, our, our high net worth system drove our alternatives platform for a long time. One of the reasons we don't have the institutional breadth that I wish we had-
Yeah
- is because 20 years ago, the way the business ran, firm put a bunch of money in a fund. We turned to the wealthy individuals in our private system-
Yeah
- and said, "We're putting 30% of the fund in.
Right.
You want to come along?" They're like: "You guys are investing? Sure, we'll come along." We didn't have to go out. We didn't have to go to Sacramento, and Austin, and, you know, here and there. You know, called our private wealth system, the firm's money, boom! Financial crisis, Volcker.
Right.
That doesn't work anymore.
Right.
That model didn't work, and it took us a while to readjust, and move forward. But that private wealth system has had a tremendously successful run
Okay, in our alternatives platform. And one of the things that our private wealth investors, the wealthiest people, won't really understand is our performance in that space has been excellent relative to the peers that we get benchmarked against.
Sure.
We haven't talked enough about that. If you look at our performance, for example, on our private equity product, our performance, okay, has been better than Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle, et cetera. The performance has been excellent. Our private wealth investors understand that.
And so, you know, we're gonna continue to tell that story, and hopefully, we can continue to broaden, you know, broaden that capability. But the private wealth system is hugely, you know, hugely important to our alternatives franchise.
Right. You guys were early money on that trend.
By the way, it's an open system, so we also raise money for other people.
Uh, right
... you know, you know, more broadly, and our clients, our clients really like that.
Nice. Efficiency ratio, the expense side, that's definitely gotten a lot of attention here recently.
Well, it's been, it's been higher than 60%.
Well, that's true. Yeah, we might not be good with numbers, but we can at least see the greater than. How are you thinking about managing the expense base here in 2024, and how are you thinking about driving operating leverage into the system?
Yeah, so a lot of... I mean, the firm, this has been a bumpy couple of years. The firm's sized for a revenue outcome that's been better than what the last two years has delivered, given the environment, given headwinds we had with consolidated investment entities, with marks on the balance sheet. And so we have a very, very strong view that the base revenues of the firm are higher, and therefore, the expense of the firm and the investments we're making in the firm will provide operating leverage against that as we look forward from here. And so we feel very good about that. We've been very disciplined and very controlled on our non-comp expenses, away from the kind of one-offs that we tried to provide more transparency on last year.
But if you look if you take the one-offs out, and you look at our non-comp expenses, we really ran our non-comp expenses relatively flat, and we continue to be focused on being as tight as we can, you know, on non-comp. So you know, the firm is levered to a certain revenue expectation. We believe we're gonna meet that revenue expectation, which delivers better operating margin. If for some reason we're wrong about that, we will adjust, and I think we've got a very good track record of showing when we need to adjust our expense base, we can adjust quickly and relatively swiftly. We've got a long history of doing that.
Sure.
But I think the firm is sized right, and we're making the right investments for the next 3-5 years for the firm to perform very well. And, you know, that's a target that will continue to guide us in our decision making.
When you think about... it's been challenging because 2023 was such a, important year as far as exiting some of the businesses. I mean, is there any idea around the quantum of expenses that are just gonna come out purely from the math of those businesses getting sold?
Sure. I mean, it wouldn't surprise you that we have transparency when you sell things as to how many people come out and what, you know, what are embedded costs that stay-
... or allocated around the firm, what goes. So we, of course, have, you know, very, very strong, you know, detailed, you know, detailed work on all that, and we're very, very, you know, thoughtful about that. But we- you know, when you, when you look at, when you look at, you know, 2023, I think 2023 was a year of really great execution across a set of priorities we said we were gonna move forward on. And 2024-... should have materially less noise in it than 2023 had.
Amen.
Yeah.
So bringing all of that together, you know, can you maybe give us, what, an idea about what gives you confidence in the positioning of the firm going forward?
Yeah, I feel, as I said, I'm gonna repeat what I said, you know, earlier, Brennan. I think the firm is really, really well positioned. You know, first and foremost, I'd just say the firm is filled with extraordinary people. We have extraordinary talent. The bench is extraordinarily deep. We have an incredible ecosystem of attracting people to the firm, whether it's coming out of school, where I think we have one of the most, you know, extraordinary hiring machines, you know, for individuals out of school, to people that go all the way up the chain, senior. We and we do this often. We go out in the world, and we say, "You know, in this space, who are the best people in the world?
Let's go hire them," you know, if we want to set our mind to hiring somebody, we generally can do that. And so we're very, very thoughtful about that. So it starts with the fact that we have extraordinary people. We have a deep, deep talent bench. And, you know, the firm has always been a dynamic manager of talent. People come, they work, they go. We have. That's the way the firm's always operated, and I think the talent infrastructure of the firm's in incredible shape. We now have these two great businesses. We've materially simplified the structure. We have Global Banking and Markets . We have Asset and Wealth Management . In Global Banking and Markets , we can continue to take some share, we can continue to grow financing. We're a leader in that business.
In Asset and Wealth Management , we have a clear path to high single-digit revenue growth, improved margins, and therefore meeting our targeted returns, while continuing to grow our management fees across that business, and we'll continue to be very disciplined and operate the firm efficiently. And if we just execute on those things, and that's what we're focused on, we're focused on executing. If we execute across that, firm's gonna do very, very well. And I think we've got the firm set up, aligned, and executing in a way where... You know, the environment, I can't tell you exactly how the environment will vary.
Right.
I can tell you, we're gonna continue to execute and make progress on what we've set out to do.
Excellent. That's a great note to end on.
Okay.
David, thanks a lot for your time today.
Thank you very much.
My pleasure.
Thank you, Brennan. Thank you for having me. Thank you.