Goldman Sachs is without peer in the world of finance. And yet the mystery of how Goldman Sachs accomplishes record profits, year after year, remains. As a strategy consultant to Goldman Sachs for more than thirty years, Charles D. Ellis developed close relationships with many of the firm's past and present leaders around the world and gained extraordinary access to all aspects of the business. In The Partnership, he reveals the key events and decisions that tell the colourful, character-driven story of how Goldman Sachs became what it is today. From Sidney Weinberg, a junior high school dropout with a flair for markets; to Gus Levy, who brought ferocious intensity to every minute of every working day; to John Whitehead, who wrote the core values that defined a culture of teamwork in serving clients; and, to the unpretentious John Weinberg, who was the quintessential relationship banker of his era, to current CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein.Starting as a sole proprietorship dealing in commercial paper in the mid-nineteenth century, Goldman Sachs became an innovative underwriter, struggled to survive the crash and Depression, and came out of World War II to complete what was then the single most important transaction in Wall Street's history: Ford Motor Company's IPO. Goldman Sachs overcame a full set of dramatic perils: Penn Central's bankruptcy, Robert Maxwell's abusive frauds, and insider trading scandals. Ellis uncovers how the firm's core values, intensive recruiting, entrepreneurial creativity, and disciplined risk taking laid the foundations, multiplied the firm's resources and profits and magnified its power to help it become what it is today: one of the most successful business organizations in the world.