New York, Jan 21, 2026, 19:35 EST — After-hours
- Goldman promotes Ben Frost to chairman of investment banking in leadership reshuffle
- SEC filing shows $16 billion note issuance; director reports share sales in Form 4 filing
- Traders watch Washington on proposed credit-card rate cap and next week’s Fed meeting
Goldman Sachs Group Inc has promoted consumer-and-retail banker Ben Frost to chairman of investment banking, elevating a dealmaker who ran some of the firm’s biggest sector mandates last year. The Wall Street bank’s shares were up 1.1% at $953.01 in after-hours trading.
The move lands as big banks try to lock in senior coverage ahead of what they see as a fuller 2026 calendar for corporate deals and capital raising. For Goldman, investment banking remains one of the fastest ways to swing revenue — when boards move, fees follow.
On an earnings call last week, CEO David Solomon said the backdrop looked “incredibly constructive in 2026 for M&A and capital markets” — M&A is shorthand for mergers and acquisitions — after the bank posted a profit beat powered by dealmaking and trading. Reuters
Frost joined Goldman as a partner in 2018 and most recently served as co-head of its global consumer and retail group, the memos said. Cosmo Roe and Milan Hasecic were named as the new global co-heads of the consumer and retail group.
Consumer and retail has been a busy fee pool for Wall Street, a mix of brand deals, buyouts and cross-border consolidation that can turn quickly when financing opens up. Goldman fights for those mandates against peers such as JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, and small shifts in senior coverage can matter when clients pick advisors.
In a Form 8-K filing — a disclosure companies use to report certain major events — Goldman said it issued $16 billion in new notes on Wednesday, ranging from floating-rate debt due 2029 to fixed-to-floating notes maturing in 2047. Fixed-to-floating notes pay a set coupon at first and then reset with market rates.
A separate Form 4 filing, which discloses insider transactions, showed director David A. Viniar reported sales of 3,390 Goldman shares on Jan. 16 at weighted average prices mostly between about $968 and $976 a share.
But a Washington fight over credit-card rates has kept investors jumpy about bank earnings power, even for firms that have pulled back from consumer lending. Goldman fell 1.9% on Tuesday as bank stocks slid around a White House deadline tied to President Donald Trump’s call for a 10% cap on credit card interest rates. “For now, it’s an overhang, but that overhang could clear quickly,” Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management, said. Reuters
Traders now turn to the Federal Reserve’s Jan. 27-28 meeting for fresh signals on the path of interest rates, a driver for both trading conditions and the willingness of CEOs to do big-ticket deals.
Goldman is scheduled to report first-quarter results on April 13, when investors will look for updates on the deal pipeline, trading revenue and costs after the latest leadership changes.
