Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon addressed the complicated situation the firm faced this week as its general counsel and chief legal officer, Kathy Ruemmler, dominated headlines for her past connections and thousands of emails with disgraced former financier Jeffrey Epstein.
She is now set to step down this summer.
Ruemmler submitted her resignation on Thursday, which Solomon said he reluctantly accepted as the media storm grew about a variety of her contacts with Epstein and his lavish gifts to her, all of which transpired before she joined Goldman as its top legal official in 2020.
“She called me yesterday afternoon and told me that the press coverage of the work she had done previously and of this whole situation had just gotten to a level of noise and distraction that she thought it was distracting the firm,” Solomon told CNBC during a live interview on Friday. He added that he had “reluctantly accepted her resignation, but I respect her decision, and she and the firm are looking forward.”
“It was putting her in a position where it was hard for her to execute on her job and her responsibilities,” Solomon said, “and she just thought it was time to step away.”
The CEO said said that Ruemmler’s connections with Epstein predated her time at the Wall Street bank, but acknowledged the complexity the situation presented for the firm’s top leadership. Previously, Ruemmler was a member of President Barack Obama’s White House counsel, advising him on matters related to foreign policy and national security, and later served as a partner at the elite law firm Latham & Watkins before joining Goldman.
“As a CEO and a leadership team, we’re making real-time decisions with a very valued colleague that we worked with very closely, and that’s not an easy thing to work through. There is a lot of nuance to that.” He added that he was “proud of the way Kathy has handled herself and the way we’ve worked through this.”
And he added that Goldman wasn’t the only large organization facing the fallout of high-powered individuals’ apparent connections to Epstein, who died in 2019 but whose legacy has continued to cast a pall over large segments of the corporate sector.
“A lot of people are trying to work through it,” Solomon told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin when pressed for more detail on how the decision came about. He praised Ruemmler’s contributions, calling her “a tremendous human being” who had served as an “extraordinary general counsel with deep, deep experience” for the banking institution.
Ruemmler’s last day at Goldman is set to be June 30, the bank said.
Last month, Goldman representative Tony Fratto said in a statement that it is “well known that Epstein often offered unsolicited favors and gifts to his many business contacts.”
“As Kathy has said many times, she had a professional association with Jeffrey Epstein when she was a lawyer in private practice, heading the defense and investigations practice at a global law firm,” the statement said. “She regrets ever knowing him.”
