Goldman Sachs: Information, Comments, Opinions and Facts

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Larry's Corner Lucas van Praag - The Goldman Sachs PR Chief 
Has His Own PR Problems

Lucas van Praag, the high level, high paid head of Goldman Sachs worldwide corporate communications has his own PR problems attempting to improve the bad PR of his company.

Earlier, Charlie Gasparino - formerly with CNBC now with FOX - reported on the Fake Lucas van Praag Twitter page and disclosed that he believes it was the work of DealBreaker blogger Bess Levin.   My related story appears in a previous post, Goldman Sachs Pr - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly along with the embedded video featuring Gasparino.(A related story by Charlie Gasparino can be found by clicking here)

As is the case almost every week, a new story concerning GS saturates the internet from major media to bloggers.  This weeks "breaking news" by Charlie - Lucas van Praag and the Fake Twitter page - will make it this weeks buzz.

But the story about van Praag has been brewing for some weeks.  I, in fact, had been contacted by a journalist who was working on a story about him a month ago..  But this Twitter thing has brought it to the forefront and I am sure will reintroduce older stories as I do here. 

David Weidner of the Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch wrote a column about van Praag  that was posted on February 23rd.  It is worthy of a revisit to it here in Larry's Corner.  You will learn what a "Chimera" is...it looks a little like van Praag.  (Editor's Note:  David Weidner is the journalist who published "The Top 10 Wall Street Blogs You Must Bookmark Now" in which he included this blog AND DealBreaker as otwo of the ten...click here for GS post and list of all ten). 

The Chimera at the gates of Goldman Sachs
Commentary: Goldman's PR chief is on message

By David Weidner, MarketWatch

"I'm sure there's a lot of pressure internally to fight back," said Steve Frankel, a partner specializing in financial services communication at Joele Frank, Brimmer Wilkinson Katcher. "Investment bankers read every word of every story that's written about the firm. "The (Goldman) PR strategy is to answer every criticism aggressively and in this situation and others, sometimes that approach makes it a bigger story." Some PR pros believe van Praag has, on occasion, been too aggressive and should have "dialed it back" but even critics refer to him as among" the best in the business." That is to say on that front that matters most, van Praag has held the line with panache. He's made the arguments of Goldman's traders and bankers very well . It's a trade-off and maybe not a bad one. Public criticism is going to be there whether van Praag issues a firm-wide mea culpa or not. What may not survive is the morale of the firm. If van Praag is seen admitting mistakes, how does that play in house? Given what we know about most Wall Street firms, the answer is not well. "During crisis, many corporate communications executives are in a 'no-win' position. Van Praag may be one of them," said Alan Towers, a corporate reputation consultant and head of TowersGroup Inc. "Reputation is built or broken by corporate culture, not communications. Even the top PR person usually has limited influence over culture, but is 'responsible' for reputation. I've seen these executives commit career suicide by pushing a defiant message management forces on them, then get fired when the company caves and needs a scapegoat." To take it a step further, van Praag seems to be betting that a firm built on loyalty will stay loyal to him. Probably a good bet at Goldman. Read the entire article...click here

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