Isabelle Ealet
Co-Head of Securities, Goldman Sachs
Isabelle Ealet went into her current role at Goldman early last year with a lot of question marks in the air. Not over her, but over why her predecessors as global co-heads of securities-longtime Goldman partners Edward Eisler and David Heller-both departed the bank at the start of 2012. (Speculation ran from salary issues to a blocked succession path up the executive chain.)
But big things were expected of Ealet, the shop's "queen of commodities," who had helped make major revenue drivers out of the firm's commodities, fixed income and currency trading.
Running the securities side of the house with co-head Pablo Salame, she helped Goldman's institutional client services division (the trading portion of the securities business) generate net revenue of $9.5 billion in the first half of 2013, down slightly from $9.6 billion in the same period of 2012, while also focusing on compliance issues, as many Dodd-Frank rules on commodities and derivatives kicked into gear this year.
Ealet, a Goldman partner since 2000, sits on the firm's management, risk, principal investments and securities committees.
A French national, she has served as an advisor for the French Embassy in the United Kingdom and also is a trustee of the Friends of the French Institute charity, promoting French culture in London.
