The ex-Goldman Sachs MD living in a van: "I have nothing bad to say about that place"

It's Thanksgiving, and Christian Alexander, a former macro salesman at Goldman Sachs and ex-managing director at the firm, is thankful. He has $2k in the bank, a rescued pit bull dog called Mike, and a yellow Ford van that he calls Apollo 13.

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"I've been rich and I've been broke three times in my life," says Alexander. "I’ve had $3m in my bank, and I've been overdrawn $300 a few times." Being broke gets harder as you get older, he adds: "Everything is funny when you're youthful. When you're over 50 it's not so easy." 

There's a humility which comes with being broke, says Alexander, describing himself these days as "frugal as heck:" "I bought everything at Goodwill. Everything I own except knickers and socks came from a thrift shop. I've learned to live in a lower oxygen environment." His new environment involves Mike, who does silly things like walk into telegraph poles. It also involves writing a Substack which explains how it was that Alexander lost his job, his money, and a life where he once lived with a wife and three children.

It was drugs. Over a period of years, Alexander thinks he spent $500k on cocaine. "I was doing 10 grams a day. I was in the bathroom every 15 minutes. I was not sleeping for a whole week," he recalls. The habit, which began while Alexander was in his late 30s at Goldman Sachs in London, got so bad that Alexander's coke dealer stopped dealing to him. And so he came off cocaine and took up alcohol instead. "It was a slow creeping process to alcoholism," he says. When he tried to quit alcohol 10 years later, he found he couldn't: "I would go back to trying to drink normally again; within 48 hours I’d be drinking whisky." 

Alexander left Goldman Sachs in 2013. He'd worked for the firm in New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo and London. He cried on the sidewalk when he walked away. "I can't say anything bad about that place," he says of Goldman. "They tried to rescue me like 80 times over. They exited me with such grace, giving me a bunch of money and allowing me to craft my narrative about my exit."

Alexander had been a top performer before the cocaine took hold. "If I stayed in Hong Kong with Goldman, they told me I would have made partner," he says. Ironically, he left Hong Kong to save his marriage with his wife who was still in New York, but when things unravelled when the family moved to London.

Alexander didn't go directly from Goldman to Apollo 13. There was a slow falling through alternative jobs at JPMorgan and SocGen. It became apparent that banking wasn't for him, says Alexander; he was too loud, insufficiently political for the new hyper-regulated world. For a while, he made more money than ever as a headhunter, but he was drinking. He opened a bike shop and then nearly lost all hope when that failed and he couldn't repay a loan to his mother. 

Alexander was raised by his mother and his grandmother, who he describes as irrepressible optimists. But his father was an addict who killed himself when Alexander was around 10 years old, and his family is spattered with the fallout of excess. It's in the male line; it's in the female line too. - his dad's younger sister is a meth addict. "I am the only surviving Alexander male." 

Alexander says he went into banking for the wrong reasons. "I was interested in a Wall Street career for the money and the excitement, and the chaotic environment. People are always getting promoted and fortunes are won and lost. It was the buzz rather than a fascination with markets." Now that he's out, he has no regrets, except perhaps failing to save a little bit of the money he once earned. "The difference between earning £500k a year and £200k a year is just spending on bullsh*t stuff," he reflects. 

This Thanksgiving, he's with Mike and Apollo 13 on Rhode Island. The future is uncertain and might involve another tour in the van. "If necessary, I'd flip burgers," says Alexander. "There aren't many other ex-Goldman MDs that will say that." 

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