The New Goldman Age – and What It Means for Finalis

Wall Street’s top investment banks delivered a surprisingly strong Q2 this year, driven by a resurgence in M&A activity, elevated trading volumes, and strategic balance sheet repositioning amid macroeconomic volatility. But beneath the headline earnings lies a deeper shift: the accelerating bifurcation between centralized incumbents like Goldman Sachs and decentralized, technology-powered platforms like Finalis.

This divergence isn’t competitive, it’s complementary. The tailwinds lifting Goldman Sachs in this “new age” of investment banking are the same forces expanding the surface area of opportunity for Finalis.

🧾 Wall Street’s Q2 2025 Scorecard

• Advisory & Underwriting: The five major U.S. banks pulled in $9B in advisory and underwriting fees, up ~7% YoY.
  
  
• Goldman Sachs: $14.5B in Q2 net revenues (+15% YoY), $3.5B in net income, and M&A advisory fees up 16% to nearly $2B. Goldman now serves 125 of the top 150 global clients, up from 77 in 2019.
  
  
• JPMorgan Chase: $15B in net income this quarter; on track for $60B for the year.
  
  
• Citigroup & Morgan Stanley: Both reported healthy pipelines, despite softness in equity underwriting.
  
  
• Goldman AUM: Asset & wealth management now at $3.3T; dividend raised to $12/share, returning $3.8B annually to shareholders.
  
  

This wasn’t just a quarter, it was a reassertion of relevance.

🎙️ Puck’s Take: 

The New Goldman Age

In The New Goldman Age, William Cohan highlights how David Solomon has reshaped Goldman into a more focused, institutional machine. By shutting down the consumer-banking experiment, merging markets and banking divisions, and reorganizing operations, Solomon repositioned Goldman to thrive in volatility.

“The chaos and volatility… led to policy uncertainty [that] drove clients to reposition portfolios and recalibrate risks across asset classes.”

- David Solomon, quoted in Puck

Goldman thrives on disorder. In a world shaped by regulatory flux and capital chasing differentiated yield, its machine is built for acceleration. But here’s the key: that same demand for institutional-grade precision and trust no longer belongs to Goldman alone.

🧠 The Finalis Opportunity

Finalis was built to mirror what works in the investment banking elite—and then democratize it for everyone else. The same M&A tailwinds, the same regulatory recalibration, the same thirst for infrastructure that Goldman is riding are now accessible to independent bankers and boutique firms through Finalis’ platform.

1️⃣ “Decentralized Goldman” for a Fragmented World

Goldman’s moat is its fortress. Finalis’ moat is its network. By abstracting regulatory credibility, deal execution infrastructure, and platform leverage for the long tail of capital advisors, Finalis unlocks institutional power for the 99.9%.

2️⃣ Platform Economics vs. Pyramid Structures

Where Goldman scales by headcount and pays partners a fraction of fees, Finalis enables bankers to keep 90%+ while offloading compliance, supervision, and broker-dealer overhead. The result: a software investment bank model that gets more efficient as it scales.

3️⃣ Crisis as a Catalyst

Macroeconomic uncertainty isn’t a liability, it’s an accelerant. Finalis provides the connective tissue that lets small firms act with large-firm confidence amid regulatory volatility, geopolitical shocks, and interest rate swings. Turbulence isn’t a bug; it’s a feature of modern capital markets.

4️⃣ A Shift in Distribution, Not Just Capability

Where Goldman delivers institutional execution to the top 150 global clients, Finalis extends that capability to thousands of mid-market PE firms, family offices, and founder-led businesses. Its AI-enhanced orchestration layer and regulatory-first DNA make Finalis the rails for capital flow where traditional banks don’t reach.

🔄 Finalis and Goldman: Not Competing, But Completing

Goldman Sachs isn’t competition, it’s proof of concept. Goldman’s Q2 surge confirms capital markets’ vitality, but also their concentration. Finalis serves the vast market Goldman can’t: independent dealmakers and capital raisers operating below the bulge bracket, with ambitions that deserve real infrastructure.

Where Goldman serves the Fortune 100, Finalis serves the other 99.9%—with platform-grade compliance, speed, and reach.

🚀 The Big Idea

Goldman is what power looks like in the centralized model. Finalis is what power looks like in the decentralized one.

The “New Goldman Age” doesn’t just vindicate the incumbents, it validates platforms that distribute their power. Finalis isn’t disrupting Wall Street. It’s re-architecting it.