Goldman Sachs Australian chairman Christian Johnston: We’re sick of working at home

The new Goldman Sachs Australian chairman is keen to get back into the office after working from his Melbourne home for much of the year.

New Goldman Sachs Australian chairman Christian Johnston is keen to get back into the office after working from his Melbourne home for much of the year.

New Goldman Sachs Australian chairman Christian Johnston is keen to get back into the office after working from his Melbourne home for much of the year.

He said he and many other business executives he speaks to in Melbourne were “well and truly over the lockdown”.

“We have been out of the office for six months,” Johnston tells The Australian from his home.

“I travel a lot in my job including spending half the week in Sydney and overseas”.

“For a while spending more time as home was good, but it slowly wears a little thin”.

“There was a honeymoon period (about working from home) but we are over that”.

His comments come as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews suggested on Monday the state’s current lockdown strategy to combat the city’s second wave COVID-19 outbreak could be revised. Andrews said he would clarify any changes on Sunday.

Johnston said having to work from home made it harder for people to work in teams and for younger people to learn.

“We have a real apprenticeship culture in this business, where you are sitting with others, learning off others and working with others.”

Staff have returned to Goldman’s offices in Sydney, Perth and New Zealand.

“It’s just us poor Melburnians who are stuck,” he said.

Meanwhile, Johnston said he was not concerned with the changes in the investment banking landscape in Australia, including the departures from UBS and the formation of a new advisory firm Barrenjoey Capital Partners.

“The market in Australia has always been very competitive,” he said.

“There have always been comings and goings, whether it be new firms or people doing start-ups.

“We are not particularly exercised by anything recently versus other periods of time.

“Our firm is a great believer in the integrated model and the global model (for advising companies).”

“I don’t think you can advise companies on M&A unless you can bring a perspective on what shareholders are going to think.”

Johnston said his new role would free him up from administrative work and give him more time to spend with clients and working on deals.

He said the firm was also paying more attention to the $760bn industry superannuation fund sector which was becoming an important part of corporate Australia.

Investment bankers had initially seen industry funds as potential investors in deals. But Goldman Sachs now saw them as clients with broader needs.

“In investment banking we regarded them as clients who might to deals or be part of deals,” he said. But we need to cover them more holistically.

“They have so much money and they need to deploy it more creatively. They have become players in our world”.

“It’s a really interesting dynamic”.