The group confirmed the news in a memo to staff yesterday, as it was announced that Giovanni will take on the role of CFO at online grocery platform Instacart, effective January 27.
Sam Britton (pictured left), who joined Goldman Sachs in 1997, and Matt Gibson (right), a former Navy officer who has been with the firm 20 years, will run the global technology, media and telecoms group together.
Britton and Gibson are likely to have their work cut out for them this year, after Goldman Sachs advised on all three of the 10 biggest IPOs ever recorded by US tech companies.
Commenting on the market, Gibson said: “If what you’re looking for is growth, some people are willing to overpay for it right now. Valuations that we see right now are towards the upper end of what the historical trends have been.”
In December Britton advised Slack on its $27.7 billion sale to Salesforce, and in 2019 he was involved in the three largest tech deals of the year, including Salesforce’s $15.7 billion purchase of Tableau. He will now co-lead the 300-plus-person global tech group, which includes 25 partners.
“The biggest change is just the evolution of the IPO market,” Britton said. “It really has happened in the past couple years. I expect that change in the IPO process and the number of options clients have to continue to expand.”
During his time at Goldman Sachs, Gionvanni advised on Airbnb, DoorDash, Square, Twitter, Snap, Dropbox, Yelp, Zynga, eBay, Meituan and Baidu, as well as direct listings for Spotify and Slack. He also worked on Credit Karma's sale to Intuit, Spotify's acquisition of podcast properties, Skype's sale to Microsoft and Zillow's purchase of Trulia.
