In late 2017, Goldman Sachs executives were feeling the pressure. Revenues in the fixed-income division — long considered the jewel in Goldman’s crown — were slumping towards a nine-year low. As they unveiled new targets for its business, doubts swirled about why the bank had stuck with the unit. Many competitors made deep cuts. 

Lloyd Blankfein, then the bank’s chief executive, cut his teeth in the bank’s notorious commodities trading unit J Aron & Co, and had long argued that the decline in fixed-income revenues — which data provider Coalition found slumped by nearly 40% in the big banks over seven years — was short-term, and not a post-crisis structural change across the industry. That reasoning was starting to wear thin.