Andrew Williams, a former public affairs staffer to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner now with General Electric, will join Goldman Sachs next month as the bank continues its PR overhaul.
Williams has been director of media relations at GE for the past two years, helping the company respond to fallout from a damaging New York Times piece last year that said GE paid no corporate taxes in 2010.
The Financial Times, which first reported Williams’ move, noted he was a fixture seated behind Geithner during congressional hearings early in the secretary’s tenure in the Obama administration. "Geithner's PR A-team now in place at Goldman. Just need the man himself," Tom Braithwaite, U.S. banking editor for the FT, joked on Twitter.
Prior to Treasury, Williams was VP for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York under Geithner and worked on the agency side as a director for Public Strategies.
Goldman in March brought in former Geithner aide and White House press secretary Jake Siewert to replace longtime communications chief Lucas van Praag, who retired.
That move came after a vicious cycle of bad press for the bank since the financial crisis which climaxed when a 12-year employee savaged the firm in widely read March 14 New York Times op-ed that declared the Goldman work environment “toxic and destructive.”