The downside of being rich and successful is that you have to be ultra careful of your image.
There are certain groups it's safest not to get involved with. Animal lovers, for instance - and, particularly, cat lovers: steer well away from anything to do with fluffy, pretty, helpless little kittens. Put one foot wrong, and these people will mark you out, tell all their pals, and start a campaign against you - modern technology makes it frighteningly easy to do.
(This great photo is thanks to flickr via Marissa Cap)
Goldman Sachs quite accidentally became involved with a bunch of kittens. Seems their intentions were good - but they took their eye off the catnip ball. And look what happened.
In New York, Rich Brotman runs an animal rescue service called City Critters.
In August, he found a litter of five abandoned kittens on a construction site on which Goldman Sachs are building their new HQ. The youngsters were nicknamed Blackberries because of their dark coats.
Rich Brotman took the baby moggies home and approached Goldman S about help for paying the medical costs involved in making sure the animals were in good health. He also asked GS to canvas their employees, to see if anyone would like to adopt the the little fellows. Goldman Sachs were pleased to help.
However, it wasn't long before things were going rapidly downhill for the company.
In October a local New York paper claimed that promised money for the veterinary bills had not been forthcoming - and, insult to injury, the kittens had been brutally abandoned as no-one had given them homes.
In no time at all, this story was all over the internet, the blogosphere was in uproar, and Goldman Sachs wereThe Great Satan and marked with the number of the Beast, 666. None of it was helped by the fact the company had just announced $3.2billion quarterly profits. All that cash floating around - and 5 little kittens abandoned to their fate. Oh, dear!
Except, it turned out it was all a big understanding, as the Goldman Sachs boys belatedly leapt into action to point out. All the bills had been paid - the delay had not been on their side, they had been waiting to be billed by the vet. And all the kittens had found good homes, two of them going to a friend of the Goldman Sachs lawyer. And, they added plaintively, they would never be unkind to kittens.
Goldman S should learn from this. Their public image is not good at the moment, and when that happens, people will pounce on anything that seems to confirm that. It's obvious what happened here. To GS it was a minor incident, they agreed to do something about the kittens, and they did. Bills take time to come in, and get processed by whatever the section of their accounts dept is that deals with homeless kittens. Their mistake was in not keeping in touch and explaining things.
It could have been such a great tale to improve their image. They messed up. Maybe they should realise that a good PR department is worth just as much as their uber-clever money men. A shake up of their PR people, perhaps?
