As Lloyd Blankfein huddled with David Solomon and Stephen Scherr at Scherr’s home in Sagaponack, it seemed there was a Goldman Sachs dress code in effect. Both Blankfein and Solomon wore white polos (Blankfein’s even had Goldman Sachs lettering on the sleeve) and navy pants. This made Scherr, in a long sleeve shirt and khakis, the odd man out, but he was forgiven.
“He’s terrific: smart, good sense of humor, upbeat,” Blankfein said.
The colleagues don’t hang out much in the Hamptons, according to the boss. “When you’re that close to somebody five days a week, you don’t look to spend your off time with him,” Chief Executive Officer Blankfein said of Scherr, who in May became CEO of Goldman Sachs Bank.
Golf and science were the main topics of conversation at this gathering, which Scherr and his wife, Susan, hosted on behalf of the New York Stem Cell Foundation.
“This is a social thing, and everybody’s happy,” Blankfein said at the Friday event. On Tuesday the company posted a 74 percent increase in second-quarter profit.
Scherr joined the New York Stem Cell Foundation’s board recently after following the organization for years through his wife’s brother, Jeff Wallerstein, the nonprofit’s chief financial officer.
“The science isn’t focused on any particular disease,” Scherr said as he welcomed guests. “It’s really to enable scientists across a range of disciplines to make a big difference in finding the solution to a number of different diseases.”
The NYSCF Institute has its own full-time researchers moving into expanded laboratory space in January. The foundation’s science fair and gala will be Oct. 20 at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York.
“Our work is limited only by the imagination of our scientists and our funding,” said Susan Solomon, NYSCF’s CEO and founder. “We’re really close, we are seeing the promise of years of infrastructure turning into treatments and cures.”
Roy Geronemus, founding chairman of NYSCF (and a college classmate of Blankfein’s), said the private funding model brings speed. “I think big pharma will be knocking on our door, and they already are.”
Scherr, who grew up in Huntington on Long Island listening to rock radio station WBAB, took a mini Reuben sandwich from a waiter’s tray as he watched guests stroll down the lawn to the sunken tennis court. In the pool house bathroom, the message on the hand towels summed up the scene: “Life is Better at the Beach.”
(Updates with October gala in eighth paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the name of the foundation chairman.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda Gordon in New York at agordon01@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Eichenbaum at peichenbaum@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill
©2016 Bloomberg L.P.
