GS - The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference (Transcript)
2024-05-30 11:20:27 ET
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS)
Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference
May 30, 2024, 08:00 AM ET
Company Participants
John Waldron - COO and President
Conference Call Participants
Presentation
Unidentified Analyst
All right. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for making it in again for the second day. We'll get started here with our first session for the day. We have Goldman Sachs again. Representing Goldman, we have John Waldron, Chief Operating Officer and President. Thank you, John. I think you have probably seventh-time at the conference.
John Waldron
I've lost count but I love this event. You guys do a wonderful job. It's always good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Question-and-Answer Session
Q - Unidentified Analyst
We appreciate your time. Yes, so thank you. So, John, you guys put up a slide deck this morning about the Asset & Wealth business, so dig into that a little bit, but I wanted to kind of start a bit more broad picture and then we can go into the Asset & Wealth business. I think about, over the last couple of years, you've described the macro backdrop as challenging, some of the most complicated you've seen in a while, curious what you're seeing right now and how it's affecting your client base?
John Waldron
Yes. So you're right, we've described it as challenging. I've described it as challenging. I actually think it's getting a little more benign and actually fairly constructive. I think there are four major -- if I think about our clients, what our clients are focused on, and what we tend to talk to our clients about, there are four major issues. One is the U.S. economy and inflation. Two is geopolitics. Three is the U.S. election, which is kind of coming into focus. And four is broad technology, AI, digital transformation. Those tend to be the big tentpole topics.
On the economy and on inflation, I would say, inflation is clearly moderating. The disinflation is clear, but it's still sticky. We were just talking, I was at an event yesterday with a handful of CEOs and most of whom are here speaking today, and we all kind of agreed, it's still there, it's in the system. Companies are used to getting price.
They plan to get more price. The customer, whether it's a consumer or an institutional business, B2B customer, is used to absorbing the price, and so it's in the system. Wages are still sticky. There's some commodity price inflation. So supply chains are still not fully normalized. So it's just stickier and I think the Fed obviously sees that.
Employment is strong. The consumer is very resilient, maybe a little bit of weakness at the lower end, but broadly quite resilient, and the fiscal spend, particularly in the United States, but I'd say globally, but particularly in the United States, is a big tailwind. So in terms of GDP growth, you get a lot of fiscal impulse....
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference (Transcript)