Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein might not be leaving the bank immediately or even this year, but he’s inching closer to saying outright that he will leave, eventually.
On Friday, after The Wall Street Journal reported the CEO could be leaving by the end of this year and a spokesman declined to comment about it, Blankfein offered this response, via his verified Twitter account:
“It’s the @WSJ’s announcement…not mine. I feel like Huck Finn listening to his own eulogy.”
Once, he joked about dying at his desk at Goldman. But as he approaches the 12th anniversary of his appointment as CEO, Blankfein more recently has talked about what lies beyond. “I don’t want to give anyone false hope,” he said in an interview last year, “but I’m not planning to die at my desk.”
Blankfein might be taking a cue from Mark Twain, the author of Huckleberry Finn. While Twain was visiting London once, someone started a rumor that he was gravely ill. It was followed by a rumor that he had died.
According to a widely-repeated legend, one major American newspaper printed his obituary and, when Twain was told about this by a reporter, he quipped: “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”
Tom Franck contributed reporting