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David Solomon started at Goldman Sachs in 1999, joining in his mid-30s from the scruffy Bear Stearns, as a partner in the junk bond group of the investment bank he now runs. Alan Waxman came to Goldman’s 85 Broad Street headquarters just a year earlier, fresh with an undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Their respective careers journeys since the late 1990s recently converged in an intriguing way.

Waxman is the co-founder and chief executive of Sixth Street Partners, the private capital firm he launched in 2009 after his Goldman departure and that now manages more than $70bn. Sixth Street just acquired GreenSky, a consumer lending business, from Goldman for a song, less than $500mn. The deal marked comprehensive retrenchment in Goldman’s main street ambition — the bank had bought Greensky for $1.7bn at the closing price for the deal last year, in a move championed by Solomon himself.

Solomon’s tenure can be characterised as rocky, at best. Turnover of staff at Goldman Sachs is common but the pace of senior departures in recent years has struck even jaded Wall Street hands as unusually brisk.

More generally, with the rise of private capital and Silicon Valley, the top brains in finance, whether young or seasoned, have increasingly compelling options outside of big banks, which are facing the unyielding demands of regulators, politicians, shareholders and the general public.

Shareholders of Goldman Sachs could fairly wonder if they would have preferred to have kept Waxman instead of Solomon among these two late-1990s joiners. But the related question is: if someone had the obvious talent of Waxman, why would they want to ply their trade at Goldman Sachs for decades? Are the big banks then otherwise stuck with a pool of executives who simply could not get a better job somewhere else?

This may be a false dichotomy. Waxman starred in Goldman’s famed special situations group that managed distressed debt and made complex loans. He left Goldman just as it became a bank holding company and before the introduction of the Volcker rules on proprietary trading — changes that tamped down on risky activities. Sixth Street itself then has benefited from growth in so-called shadow banking that happens outside of the traditional banking regulatory oversight.

An executive at a big bank is probably better suited for somebody who is interested in taming complex organisations, managing risk diversification and gladhanding a variety of disparate constituencies.

James Gorman of Morgan Stanley and Jane Fraser of Citigroup are each former McKinsey management consultants. JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon got his start out of business school wheeling and dealing in regional banks as the apprentice of Sandy Weill.   

One longtime Goldman executive now in private equity said being a successful banker or trader was far different to being an effective manager, even if usually one could only ascend to a leadership post by first being a respected producer. Solomon, as previous head of investment banking for Goldman, maintained its dominance in securities underwriting as well as mergers and acquisitions advisory.

“Alan could never run the 45,000 people at Goldman,” said this person who maintained he was a huge admirer of Waxman’s accomplishments. “He is an investor first.”

Waxman probably would not want to be, either, given that Sixth Street investment returns have made him a tycoon without any byzantine bureaucracy to master. The Sixth Street founder recently poached from Goldman a former close colleague, Julian Salisbury, who like Waxman, is a highly accomplished investor. Waxman declined to comment.

Goldman insiders dispute any talent deficit. One 30-year veteran told me that its core trading and investment banking businesses were more profitable and dominant than ever. Moreover, the level of commercial and social prestige from carrying a Goldman business card remained unmatched by virtually any other employer. This person also wryly noted that there were plenty of Goldman veterans who underwhelmed professionally after leaving the firm. 

Still, among the important tasks of any chief executive is the allocation of shareholder capital. And in the GreenSky transaction, Waxman will almost certainly get the better of Solomon, though perhaps it will be of some comfort to Goldmanites that the Sixth Street founder is an alumnus of a bank that taught him much of what he knows.

sujeet.indap@ft.com