Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office were marked by unhealthy uncertainty, yet he believes that as a new normal emerges, markets will “settle down.”
Still, Solomon added that despite the current uncertainty, mergers and acquisitions—a major source of revenue for the investment bank—increased year over year in the first quarter, and he believes the rest of the year could see better results. Goldman brought in $1.9 billion in dealmaking and underwriting fees in the first quarter, Bloomberg reported, which was just short of competitor JPMorgan’s $2.2 billion, and down from the $2.1 billion it brought in during the same quarter last year.
“If the level of uncertainty grows from here, yes, you won’t see the same amount of capital-markets activity,” Solomon said. “But my own belief is things will settle down, we’ll have a clearer policy perspective and some normalization of capital markets.”
“People need to transact, need to raise capital, need liquidity for their investments,” he said. “Part of this is just a reset of expectations.”
