John Whitehead, the who led Goldman, Sachs & Co.’s first overseas ventures and was in charge of the Lower Manhattan development after Sept. 11, 2001, died at 92 on Saturday.
Whitehead joined Goldman Sachs in 1947, after receiving a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School. In his 37 years at Goldman Sachs, which he co-chaired with John L. Weinberg for 8 years, Whitehead was responsible for the firm’s international growth.
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Whitehead wrote in his memoir that he wanted to take over as chairman, with Weinberg as vice chairman, but Weinberg objected.
Whitehead and Weinberg brought up major financial leaders like Robert Rubin, who became Treasury secretary under President Clinton, and Stephen Friedman, who became the National Economic Council director under President GW. Bush, and later served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“All of our decisions were joint decisions, ” Whitehead said in an interview after Weinberg’s death in 2006. “We talked to each other once a day or by phone at night if we didn’t talk during the day. We each kept a little card in our pocket to note down things we needed to tell each other.”
It took Whitehead only a few years to assign a Goldman Sachs investment banker to every U.S. corporations making at least $1 million, according to Bloomberg.
