Goldman's Happy Few

In years to come, Wall Street will talk of the class of 2008, the way political activists hark back to the class of '68 or how Army officers recalled the West Point class of '42.

This would be the new class of Goldman Sachs partners. Like those other classes graduating to a new position in a time of trial, Goldman's new partners will have grasped the most prized brass ring on Wall Street just as their business coming under the most intense fire since the Depression.

The firm is expected to make its biennial selection this week, and the list is likely to be much shorter than in the past, the Telegraph reports. In 2006,115 Goldman executives were named "partner managing directors," up from 99 in 2004.

But Goldman, like every other financial firm, has come under intense stress in the financial crisis. It is cutting 10 percent of its work force, or some 3,300 jobs. At the end of its third quarter, Goldman had allocated $11.4 billion for compensation and bonuses, down 32 percent from the same period a year ago.

So it stands to reason that the new partners will be fewer and less handsomely rewarded than in years past.

And what rewards those were. Not only were there millions of dollars in bonuses on top of their base salaries of $600,000, but the firm also did their taxes and booked them tables at Manhattan's top restaurants, according to a 2006 report by the Wall Street Journal.

Goldman created its partnership pool after it became a publicly traded company. The firm sought to preserve as much of the culture of a partnership as possible.

Now that Goldman has completed yet another wrenching transformation, becoming a bank holding company, can anything of the partnership ethos still survive?

• Market Darwinism: Which Retailers Will Survive the Recession?
• Microsoft Unit Is the Target of a Criminal Probe
• Job of the Week: Master Liquor Distiller
• Credit Crunched: A Special Report on Wall Street Chaos