The timing made it impossible to ignore. Days after Bloomberg reported that roughly 20 Goldman Sachs executives were in line to collect more than $500 million in equity awards from a five-year performance plan, CEO David Solomon stepped onto the firm’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday and addressed the question that has followed him for weeks.
Solomon pushed back against reports of an impending transition to executive chairman, saying Tuesday that no succession process or timeline is underway. “I just want to be clear, there is no succession transition or timeline underway at Goldman Sachs,” Solomon said during the earnings call.
Last month, news outlets cited anonymous sources saying Goldman’s board had discussed a plan under which Solomon would become executive chairman and Goldman President and COO John Waldron would take over as CEO as early as next year, according to The Wall Street Journal. Solomon called the coverage noise and moved on quickly, which was easy to do with a quarter this strong backing him up.
A Quarter That Speaks for Itself
Goldman reported Q3 2026 earnings of $17.01 per share, beating the consensus estimate, on net revenues of $18.68 billion. Revenue increased 23% year over year. The bank said net revenues were the second highest in its history, helped by a strong quarter in equities and continued growth in asset and wealth management.
Growth was primarily driven by a 32% increase in the Global Banking & Markets division, led by a 72% surge in equities revenue. The stock traded up more than 4% early in Tuesday’s session after the report. It is hard to mount a credible campaign to remove a CEO on the same morning his firm posts numbers like these.
The Awards That Complicate the Picture
Goldman executives are on track to receive equity awards exceeding $500 million at the current share price, with about 20 senior leaders in line for awards tied to a five-year performance period ending later this month. Solomon himself could receive more than $100 million.
Goldman set the program in 2021, tying top leaders’ payouts to the bank’s stock performance and how it stacks up against peers over the full period. Over the past five years, Goldman’s total shareholder return including reinvested dividends came to about 150%, outpacing every comparison company except Bank of New York Mellon at about 174%. The list of expected recipients includes President John Waldron and several business heads.
That matters because Waldron is the name most frequently attached to the succession reports. Both men collecting nine-figure payouts from the same five-year plan does not read like a firm preparing one of them to leave anytime soon. It could just as easily be read as a retention mechanism doing exactly what it was designed to do.
What Traders Should Watch
GS is trading near $923. The succession question will not disappear on Solomon’s say-so alone, but it now competes with a strong earnings beat and a vested management team for the market’s attention. Watch for any board-level signals or further anonymous sourcing from the same outlets that broke the original story. Until then, the equity awards represent a structural argument against near-term disruption at the top: the final award size will be determined at the end of this month when the five-year measurement period closes, and the people receiving those shares have every incentive to stay.
