The head of Goldman Sachs' Salt Lake City office, which is a key part of the bank's push into lower-cost cities, is leaving the firm in May

• Another partner is exiting Goldman Sachs, per an internal memo viewed by Insider.
• David Lang, who runs the firm’s Salt Lake City office, will retire in May.
• Goldman has faced a raft of partner exits in recent weeks.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Another partner is departing Goldman Sachs, this time the executive who oversees the firm’s Salt Lake City, Utah location.

An internal memo sent on Monday which was viewed by Insider announced the upcoming retirement of David Lang, a partner since 2016 and head of the Salt Lake City office, who is leaving Goldman Sachs in May. The note was sent by Laurence Stein, the firm’s chief administrative officer.

Goldman has significantly grown its Salt Lake City presence during Lang’s time in his current role as it’s moved some jobs out of high-cost cities like New York and London. The office has expanded from a few hundred workers in 2008 to one of the bank’s largest in the world. 

Lang was previously the global head of investment management division operations and, prior to that, held a series of leadership roles in New York and Tokyo, the memo said. He first joined Goldman Sachs in 1994 and was named to the role of managing director in 2006.

“David has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to our culture and our people, including by serving as a mentor and friend to many of his colleagues around the world,” Stein wrote in the memo, adding that he had aided in the advancement of several D&I-focused initiatives within the company and served as the managing director sponsor for the Salt Lake City Black Network.

A representative for Goldman Sachs declined to comment beyond the comments of the memo.

Lang’s departure is the latest in a spate of exits that have hit one of Wall Street’s most prestigious firms in recent weeks. 

Among other partners who have walked away from Goldman are execs like Eric Lane, who is headed to Tiger Global Management as its next president and COO; and Omer Ismail, head of the company’s consumer business, who was poached by Walmart in a bid to shore up the firm’s growing consumer financial startup efforts.

The lower-cost city model is one way Goldman is cutting costs to meet its 2020 Investor Day targets

Goldman Sachs has, like other financial services firms, in recent years sought to move back-office operations roles to lower-cost hubs including Salt Lake City and Dallas, Texas, in addition to overseas centers like Bangalore, India, and Warsaw, Poland.

The objective is to enable the firm to save money by diverting employees to more affordable locations, as Goldman Sachs seeks to make good upon its ambitious Investor Day 2020 goal to cut costs by some $1.3 billion over the course of three years.

Speaking at a Bank of America Merrill Lynch virtual forum in November, Goldman chief financial officer Stephen Scherr said that, after a year of keeping the bank successfully afloat during the coronavirus pandemic, he was feeling a “much greater degree of confidence” about diverting jobs to more affordable hubs.

“I think that will drive some considerable cost savings for us as we reposition populations and businesses into more affordable locations around the world,” Scherr said.

Insider reported last year that the firm had posted job openings for Salt Lake City-based process-coordinator roles that support various business lines, like sales and trading and investment management. Applicants for those roles could apply with high-school diplomas or associates’ degrees preferred.

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