RIP Goldman Sachs 🪦; How much money laundering is in NFTs? You will be shocked 😳; Starling Bank, the underrated FinTech success story 🤌

FinTech is Eating the World, 10 January

Hey Everyone,

Happy Tuesday! Today’s issue is super spicy 🌶 We’re looking at all the struggles at Goldman Sachs (the reasons, the lessons & why it should say RIP to Marcus), try to see how much money laundering is in NFTs (you will be shocked!), and see what’s up with Starling Bank, the underrated FinTech success story (more neobanks should be like Starling!). Let’s jump straight into the awesome stuff:

RIP Goldman Sachs (Marcus)🪦

The news 📰 The premiere banking giant Goldman Sachs GS 0.00%↑ is suffering and it’s suffering hard - massive losses, huge layoffs, and poor performance are just the tip of the iceberg. And at the center of it all is Marcus, Goldman’s consumer banking unit.

Let’s take a closer look to see what’s happening, and why it’s about time to put this to rest.

More on this 👉 GS will reportedly start laying off ~3,200 staff this week, marking one of the biggest cuts the banking giant has ever done. More than a third of layoffs will likely be from Goldman’s core trading and banking units, as per Bloomberg.

There are three main factors behind one of the biggest rounds of redundancies ever for the Wall Street giant:

1. Silence in M&A and IPO markets that meant little to no revenues from one of Goldman’s most lucrative business lines.

2. Failed venture into consumer banking space as just last year Marcus lost a whopping $1.2 billion in its operations.

3. Poor overall performance, which is again interrelated with an attempt to get a piece of the retail banking space. The bank reportedly lost more than $2B from its new credit card and installment-lending business, as per Bloomberg.

Put it all together, and it’s totally unsurprising that Goldman’s bottom line has been hit hard, and an estimated 46% decrease in profits is expected. Which is massive 😳

What can we learn? 🤔 There are a few key lessons to learn here. Plus, a huge wake-up call to put Marcus to bed 🛏 Let’s take a look.