Bloomberg reports that Goldman Sachs is in talks to hire Richard “Jake” Siewert Jr., a former counselor to U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, to manage the bank’s communications department.
This would appear to be a significant hiring, given Siewert’s impressive resume. This certainly raises immediate questions about the fate of Lucas van Praag, 62, who has been the top communications partner for years. At the height of the crisis, van Praag himself became part of the story, which is never a good position to be in.
Van Praag “has become known for his disparaging rebuttals to negative stories about the firm, favoring phrases like ‘nonsense’ and ‘extraordinarily ill-informed.’ ”
At the time, the media was unrelentingly bad for the brand, and many wondered at times during the crisis whether Goldman Sachs would make a communications change in order to shift the narrative in a more favorable direction. But now that the crisis is for the most part over, maybe the time for a change or at least some rethinking is now.
At some point, the bank will need to define the relationship between the two men. They may well have complementary portfolios internally. As for Siewert, the 48-year old served as press secretary for President Bill Clinton and worked at Alcoa before joining Treasury in 2009.
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