An hour with Stephanie Cohen goes by in a flash.

Certainly also because the Goldman Sachs manager has a lot to tell, but above all because she speaks as quickly as if you were sitting in a supersonic airplane with her.

Wealth management, markets, regulation, start-ups, diversity, at the end of a 60-minute conversation it is time to take a deep breath.

Stephanie Cohen is then already on the way to the next appointment - customer meetings.

Inken Schönauer

Editor in business, responsible for the financial market.

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One can only guess what it means for a speed speaker like Cohen not to be on site with her employees and customers around the globe during the pandemic.

Everything about teams, Zoom and Co, everything is not easy.

And then also in an area that is very much characterized by trust.

At the American bank Goldman Sachs, Cohen is not only responsible for the consumer business as co-boss but also for business with very wealthy customers, the so-called wealth management.

When asked how things are currently going, you can hardly imagine any other answer given this energetic woman: "Very good."

"Perfect combination of trust and history"

We meet at the Goldman Sachs headquarters in Frankfurt, where Cohen has been back for the first time in many months. First she was in Berlin, now in Frankfurt, and then it's quickly back to the USA. At first glance, it doesn't seem so obvious that rich Germans should not turn to German banks first to have their wealth managed, but to an American Wall Street bank like Goldman. Cohen naturally sees it differently: "Goldman Sachs is the perfect combination of trust and history," says the 44-year-old with conviction.

Goldman can indeed look back on more than 150 years of history, but at least Deutsche Bank can boast such a history. “Large scale matters”, says Cohen, which can probably best be translated as “size is relevant” and yet somehow sounds less spectacular in German than in English. But in fact, Spill is not Goldman's thing. In the third quarter alone, Cohen's unit revenue grew 35 percent year over year to more than $ 2 billion. The company now manages a total of more than $ 1 trillion in client assets worldwide in the wealth management and consumer businesses (as of the end of September), and the trend is rising.

For Goldman, Germany is a key market for wealthy customers, and Cohen's flying visit is intended to underscore this.

There are studies, such as those by the consulting firm Wealth-X, that see Germany in the market for the rich just behind the USA and China.

Goldman has recently invested heavily in this line of business, as many other banks are doing now.

Deutsche Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse, they all want some of the cake.

The growth prospects and margins are attractive, the market is highly fragmented.

Goldman Sachs is globally active for customers, networking the know-how from the financial centers in New York, London, Shanghai and Frankfurt.

"Large scale matters."