The Financial Geography of Resilience: A Case Study of Goldman Sachs

Abstract

For all of its iconic character and controversial influence, Goldman Sachs has received rather shallow scrutiny in social sciences. This article combines an in-depth case study of Goldman Sachs with a theoretical contribution at the nexus of financial geography and evolutionary economic geography. We contend that spatial arbitrage and regulatory capture are fundamental to the organizational resilience of financial firms. Using empirical evidence, we further argue that financial centers’ adaptive resilience is a product of their strategic positioning in financial firms’ value chains. We formalize this contribution with a framework describing a set of paper, cyber, relational, and technical dimensions of financial centers’ resilience and emphasizing regulatory capture in firms’ response and adaptation to shocks. We deploy our framework in a case study of the evolution of Goldman Sachs between 1999 and 2017, focusing on how it contributed and adapted to the financial crisis of 2008–2009. Using original quantitative data and interviews, we shed light on how, as a product of the crisis, the firm unbundled its New York metro operations toward Salt Lake City and how the latter evolved from a brass-plate center to the bank’s second largest U.S. office.