Goldman Sachs scanning emails for the word ‘muppet,’ report says

Goldman Sachs is scanning company emails for the word "muppet" in an effort to verify claims that employees made derogatory remarks about clients, Reuters reported.

The investment bank’s chief executive Lloyd Blankfein told partners about the review in a conference call this week, Reuters cited sources as saying.

The hunt comes after a Goldman executive director Greg Smith resigned last week by writing an editorial in The New York Times claiming that Wall Street’s most iconic investment bank had lost its moral compass.

In the piece, he claimed that bankers at the firm referred to clients as "muppets" and sought to expose the bank's "toxic" greed.

"I attend derivatives sales meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients," Smith writes.

"It’s purely about how we can make the most possible money off of them. If you were an alien from Mars and sat in on one of these meetings, you would believe that a client’s success or progress was not part of the thought process at all." 

As the media debated whether Smith's article had dented the bank's reputation, Goldman announced another round of job cuts this time 1,700 — or about 5 per cent of its global workforce, ThisIsMoney.co.uk reported.

Last year, it cut around 2,400 positions.

It cited missed performance targets in some instances, and trader redundancy due to new technology, or else IT and operations staff who can be replaced by less expensive workers.

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