If you thought HSBC bankers with iPads were the bleeding edge of capital markets and advisory today, think again.
Goldman Sachs (who else?) this week told CNBC that it had been using drones to show acquisition targets to prospective buyers.
It is an obvious step in the evolution of the technology from weekend hobbyists in the park and assassinations surgical strikes in the Middle East. Drone warfare was always going to turn up on Wall Street before long. ‘Swarming the client’ has never seemed so literal.
'We can fly'
Goldman global head of M&A Stephan Feldgoise said that using drones helped give confidence to buyers of asset-based businesses. Some rivals, such as JPMorgan, have also apparently been using drones on deals.
You can almost imagine Jamie Dimon at an analyst fireside: “I’m like a broken record, no one in our country is fixing our roads, bridges, airports, so we’ve got our own propellers, cameras, sound, robots, we can fly, it’s amazing…”
It is terribly exciting and very Masters of the Universe, of course, but Euromoney can’t help wondering if Goldman has missed a trick to get ahead of the competition here.
Why