Lloyd Blankfein’s Final Days at Goldman Clouded by 1MDB Scandal

When Lloyd Blankfein told his colleagues at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in July that he was going to retire from the bank’s top job, he said the timing just felt right. When things are going wrong, he wrote them in a memo, you can’t up and leave.

Now in Blankfein’s final weeks as chairman of Wall Street’s most influential bank, things have gone wrong. Prosecutors are zeroing in on the firm’s work for a Malaysian investment fund that they say was raided in a historic plunder. Goldman’s role raising about $6.5 billion for 1MDB has become one of its ugliest scandals in a generation. In November, the U.S. Justice Department revealed that a former partner pleaded guilty to bribery charges, his deputy was arrested and the firm put a top Asia banking executive on leave. The stock is down more than 30 percent in 2018.