In 2017, Goldman Sachs' president and co-chief operating officer, David Solomon, had a big ask of one of his fellow bankers: Move to Goldman's outpost in Dallas, Texas. At the time, Dallas was home to roughly 900 Goldman employees, and the bank hadn't had a full-time partner stationed there since the 1990s.
The lifelong New Yorker tasked with building out the Dallas office, Aasem Khalil, didn't know what to expect. The experience, he said, has exceeded his expectations — both personally and professionally.
"If you think back to the mid-90s, to the mid-2010s in New York City, it had this incredible golden era," Khalil told Business Insider in a recent interview. "Dallas is in the very early innings of a similar run, with a financial-services renaissance, a cultural explosion, and continued population growth," he said, adding, "All of these things are really exciting."
When one thinks of Goldman Sachs, they tend to think of New York City — where Wall Street was born. Today, Dallas is Goldman's largest US office outside of New York City, home to 4,600 Goldman employees and growing.
Khalil, who was Goldman's global head of chemicals banking when he moved to Dallas, is now head of the Dallas office. He is helping to oversee the construction of a $500 million state-of-the-art office campus, which will house roughly 5,000 employees when it opens in 2028.
Goldman is not alone. A number of companies have either moved to or expanded their offices in the Lone Star State in recent years, attracted by the business-friendly environment, favorable tax policies, and a skilled workforce bolstered by the region's universities and burgeoning business scene. Elon Musk made headlines when he moved electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla to Austin from California in 2021, citing frustrations with the latter state's COVID-19 lockdown policies.
Dallas, meanwhile, has become a hub for financial firms like JPMorgan Chase, Charles Schwab, and Wells Fargo. According to the law firm Foley & Lardner, investment-banking and securities employment in Texas has surged by 27% since the coronavirus pandemic.
BI spoke to five Goldman Sachs employees in Dallas, including Khalil, to understand what it's like to work in the bank's fastest-growing US hub. They discussed the challenges of being away from headquarters, the social and professional culture, and what it means to build a career in finance outside of Wall Street.
More than a back-office hub
Prior to Khalil's arrival, Goldman's Dallas office, established in 1968, was largely focused on real estate and private wealth, as well as middle- and back-office support functions. In 2020, however, Goldman announced plans to slash more than $1 billion in costs, in part by shifting staffers from higher-cost centers like New York City and London to more affordable cities like Dallas, Texas, and Salt Lake City, Utah.
As a result, the Dallas office is now home to a much wider array of career opportunities, including investment banking, wealth management, asset management, real estate, and sales and trading, executives told BI. Some of the firm's top executives are also now based there, including Khalil, who is global head of investment-banking services in addition to leading the Dallas office, and Rob Kaplan, who rejoined Goldman last year as vice chairman of the bank and a member of its management committee following a stint as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
"One of the things about the Dallas presence is we are well represented across every division of the firm," Kaplan told BI, adding: "You'll see us grow across divisions."
The company declined to provide a breakdown by division, but a review of the bank's careers portal showed more than 250 open posts in Dallas as of late February. Positions ranged from a Java full-stack developer to associates focused on direct lending. Sixty-four job listings were in the AWM group, versus 36 in global banking and markets, and 31 in the next biggest group, the risk division.
The office's junior bankers get deal experience just like they would in New York, Khalil said. The Dallas-based investment-banking team advised Celanese, a global chemicals company, on its $1.15 billion acquisition of Exxon Mobil's business Santoprene in late 2021, and Tyler Technologies, a software firm, in its all-cash, $2.3 billion purchase of NIC, a government solutions and payments company, the same year.
Dallas' young bankers also get pulled into the deals being handled by other teams, Khalil said.
"We get a lot of calls asking for our junior resources to help execute M&A transactions for clients that are in and around the southwest," Khalil said, adding: "It happens all the time where other regions call us and say, 'Hey, can we borrow so-and-so? Or can we have so-and-so work on this?'"
Where opportunity meets connectivity
Despite efforts to make Dallas a microcosm of 200 West Street, where Goldman is headquartered, employees said the southern hub feels more intimate as a result of its smaller size.
"Forty-five hundred people doesn't sound small and cozy, but the truth is you can get to know everyone here, you can get your arms around the place, and we have a lot of mentors and coaches," said Kaplan, the vice chairman. "I spend a lot of my time mentoring and coaching young people early in their career in the Dallas office and across the firm."
Longtime Dallas resident Oksana Beard — a managing director in asset and wealth management and the firm's global head of debt capital markets for real estate and Goldman Sachs Asset Management — likes to help new arrivals get settled in the city.
"When people come, the feedback that I hear quite a bit is that they are overwhelmed by that southern hospitality and open-door culture that we tend to have," she said. The challenges tend to arise along personal lines as they adjust to their new home, she added. "It's just on a personal level of, which community do you want to plug into the most as far as where you're going to buy your house or kids' schooling and things like that," Beard explained.
Kaplan, meanwhile, has taken to hosting receptions at his Dallas home roughly once a month for employees ranging from analysts to vice presidents and managing directors. "We'll get a hundred people, as much as I can fit, into my apartment," he said.
Living in Dallas
Goldman's website paints Dallas as the perfect combination of laidback and urban living. A guide to the city displayed on the website until recently said it's home to the largest arts district in the country, over 160 miles of urban hiking and biking trails, and four major league sports teams.
Another perk of life in Dallas is the low cost of living. According to the Economic Research Institute, New York is 150% more expensive than Dallas, and a person making $30,000 per year in Dallas would need to make about $75,000 to preserve an identical living standard in the borough of Manhattan.
For Maggie Kravchuk, an analyst in the asset-and-wealth-management group, the ability to work from Dallas was a key selling point when she joined the bank full time in 2022. Kravchuk attended the nearby Baylor University so had already built a life there.
"I went to college in Texas and was able to build connections here throughout my time at undergrad," Kravchuk said. "It was amazing to be able to pursue the career in finance that I wanted without having to leave a place that had become home for me and where a lot of my friends were."
Despite having friends in the area, Kravchuk said she has also cultivated close bonds with members of her analyst class. Recently, a group of them traveled to Florida to run a half marathon.
"There's a group of us who love running," she said. "We train for a few races every year."
The highlights of the Dallas office
Perks of Goldman's Dallas office include a suite at the American Airlines Center where the Dallas Mavericks NBA team and the Dallas Stars NHL team play, employees said. Sometimes, Goldman's Dallas staffers are invited to take in a game from the suite, which is primarily used to entertain clients.
Employees get free access to the Nasher Sculpture Center, a gallery featuring more than 300 pieces of modern and contemporary work by noted artists like Picasso, Matisse, and Rodin.
Paige Richey, chief of staff for the Dallas office, said that working in Dallas has afforded her and her three kids a quality of life they might not have elsewhere.
"I tell them all the time how fortunate we are to be able to pop into the city, go to the museum, hit the Dallas Mavericks game," she said. "This feels a little bit New Yorker-ish that my girls right now — their favorite thing to do is to get onto their rollerblades and meet their friends and they go to Starbucks. So that feels a little bit like an urban lifestyle."
Goldman has a 5-day in-office policy across its offices, including the Dallas site. Still, Richey said her life there affords her the flexibility to have a career and raise her kids, thanks to supportive bosses and a short commute.
"I never thought that I'd be able to be at Goldman as a working mom with three kids and have a career that I feel is on the up, and feel like I am getting to raise our daughters and not having somebody else do that for me."
Reed Alexander is a correspondent at Business Insider. He can be reached via email at ralexander@bjinnox.com, or SMS/the encrypted app Signal at (561) 247-5758.
