Editor’s note: This story is revised from the print edition.
Los Angeles 2024 has its first corporate sponsor, in a manner of speaking: Goldman Sachs.
One of the world’s largest investment banks has blessed management committee member Gene Sykes’ decision to become CEO of the Los Angeles Olympic bid committee. He will not be paid and will work on the bid full time until the International Olympic Committee vote in September 2017.
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Gene Sykes will step away from his duties at Goldman Sachs.
Photo by: GOLDMAN SACHS
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“This organization has raised money privately to launch an effort to host the Games, and it’s going to take a considerable amount of money to do it,” Sykes said. “And we didn’t need the additional burden of, frankly, investment compensation for me. And I regard this as frankly an act of very important service on my part, so there was no issue with that on my standpoint.”
Sykes, 57, will retain his partner title at Goldman Sachs but will otherwise relinquish all management responsibilities and day-to-day duties. He’ll limit his Goldman work to advising colleagues and clients as requested.
Olympic bid cities are under pressure to spend less amid austerity rhetoric from the IOC. LA 2024 has raised $35 million to fund the 22-month campaign, half of what Chicago spent on its doomed attempt to land the 2016 Games.
LA 2024 co-chair Casey Wasserman said austerity must go beyond an unpaid CEO.
“It’s not about one person forgoing compensation, but about an ethos that exists for the entire organization,” Wasserman said.
As Sykes himself noted, he can afford to go unpaid, and as Wasserman noted, “We couldn’t afford him” if he did insist on a salary.
At Goldman, partners earn about $900,000 annually and can earn multiples of that in annual bonuses, according to The Wall Street Journal. In a statement announcing the move Nov. 12, Goldman Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein said, “We are very proud that he will be leading the charge to bring the Olympic Games back to Los Angeles.”
Before accepting the job, Sykes consulted with Blankfein and Paul Deighton, Goldman Sachs’ former COO of Europe who spent seven years as CEO of the 2012 London organizing committee, one of the most highly regarded Games in recent memory. “He was very encouraging and helped me realize how I could assist the bid,” Sykes said.
Sykes said that the commitment could be for as many as nine years, if Los Angeles wins the vote in 2017. Under Olympic rules, the bid committee would have to give way to an entirely new legal entity, a local organizing committee, at that point.
Since joining Goldman in New York in 1984, the native Angeleno has advised on hundreds of major strategic deals. He most recently was Goldman’s co-chair of global mergers and acquisitions, and co-chair of the global technology, media and telecom group.
That media and technology work has brought him into the sports business world from time to time, he said, though he did not mention any sports properties or deals when asked for specific work relevant to the Olympic bid.
Two key clients include the Walt Disney Co. and Apple, both California-based corporations with worldwide reputations as successful, popular innovators. Disney CEO Bob Iger and Apple CEO Tim Cook released statements praising Sykes’ selection last week. Those companies, or at least their images, will play a role in the bid presentation, Sykes said.
“That’s the kind of thing that people think makes Los Angeles and Southern California special,” he said. “And as we appeal to the IOC members to think about what we want to do in Los Angeles, we want very much to use that philosophy, that orientation toward innovation and things that are new.”
Before last week, Sykes already had joined the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Foundation board. U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun said the Los Angeles bid team is “one of the best I’ve ever seen in my many years. Gene’s addition makes a great team even better.”
Also last week, the bid group added Magic Johnson and longtime California labor union leader Maria Elena Durazo as vice chairs. They join Olympian Janet Evans as the second and third vice chairs.
