John LeFevre (born 1980) is a former Salomon Brothers and

Citigroup Citigroup Inc. or Citi (Style (visual arts), stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services corporation headquartered in New York City. The company was formed by the merger of banking ...

investment banker and bond syndicate executive. LeFevre is known for creating the anonymous Goldman Sachs Elevator (@GSElevator)

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

handle. The account purported to reflect and satirize banking culture, and accumulated considerable followers and press coverage.

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

and

launched internal investigations in an attempt to identify the source(s) of the tweets.

Life

LeFevre attended Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut and

Babson College Babson College is a private business school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Established in 1919, its central focus is on entrepreneurship education. It was founded by Roger W. Babson as an all-male business institute, but became coeducational i ...

in Wellesley, Massachusetts. LeFevre joined Salomon Brothers in 2001, serving in its New York, London, and Hong Kong offices. The Asset magazine referred to LeFevre as "one of the most prolific syndicate managers in Asia." He later worked for Amias Berman & Co., a capital markets and

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

boutique founded by two former Citi bankers. In 2010, LeFevre signed paperwork with Goldman Sachs to run its Asian bond syndicate desk, but ultimately was prevented from joining Goldman Sachs over a

non-compete clause In contract law, a non-compete clause (often NCC), restrictive covenant, or covenant not to compete (CNC), is a clause under which one party (usually an employee) agrees not to enter into or start a similar profession or trade in competition agains ...

. LeFevre left the industry in 2012 to write his memoir, which was published in 2015 which and became a ''New York Times'' Bestseller. The book was optioned by Paramount as a movie with

Zac Efron Zachary David Alexander Efron (; born October 18, 1987) is an American actor. He began acting professionally in the early 2000s and rose to prominence in the late 2000s for his leading role as Troy Bolton in the ''High School Musical'' trilo ...

set to star.

GSElevator

LeFevre created the @GSElevator Twitter in August 2011 as an "homage" to an earlier account called @CondeElevator, which shared supposedly overheard snippets from publisher

Condé Nast Condé Nast () is a global mass media company founded in 1909 by Condé Montrose Nast, and owned by Advance Publications. Its headquarters are located at One World Trade Center in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The company's media ...

. He would later describe his goal as "to illuminate Wall Street culture in an entertaining and insightful way". The account proved immediately successful and within a couple weeks, LeFevre (anonymously) was interviewed by Kevin Roose at ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

.'' By 2014, the account had over 600,000 followers. LeFevre later began writing articles and banking guides for

Business Insider ''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...

under the name "Goldman Sachs Elevator".

''Straight to Hell''

In 2014, LeFevre began shopping around a book proposal based on his life as a banker, to be released under a pseudonym and marketed as by the man behind @GSElevator. The proposed title, under which it was eventually published, was ''Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery and Billion Dollar Deals.'' Barron's called the book "a classic of the genre."

Citations

External links

@gselevator
{{DEFAULTSORT:LeFevre, John 1980 births Living people 21st-century American writers American bankers Citigroup employees Babson College alumni