“Economics is merely a social science,” he says. “There are no rights or wrongs.” But then, as someone who has predicted the imminent recovery of the euro for much of the past two years based on economic fundamentals, O’Neill should well appreciate that number-crunching alone can’t predict market trends.
So he intends to sharpen Goldman’s forecasts by incorporating into economic models anecdotal information about the economy and markets picked up by the firm’s bankers. And he aims to tailor research more to the firm’s core clients - perhaps 50 in all - rather than try to compete with brokerage firms spewing out broad predictions. “We will be doing more for a smaller group of people and leave the commoditized stuff for the masses,” he says.
The tough act that O’Neill, 44, follows at Goldman is Gavyn Davies - government adviser, confidant of Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and longtime Labour Party member, who has been appointed chairman of British Broadcasting Corp. O’Neill plans to call on Davies for occasional research pieces or even client consultations; the BBC job, O’Neill points out, only entails a four-day week. “Gavyn’s got a big brain,” he says. “We want to make sure we can have a piece of it still.”
