Phoebe Drummond

I am a Global Banking and Markets Associate at Goldman Sachs covering High Yield and Distressed Corporate Credit and Leveraged Loans. My role centers on intermediating between our trading desk and a broad base of hedge funds, asset managers, and institutional investors—solving for client outcomes while balancing internal desk positioning to facilitate risk transfer across secondary and primary markets.

What makes the seat intellectually engaging is the complexity of the underlying markets. In credit, seemingly external variables—liquidity dislocations, energy prices, rate moves—can rapidly reshape cost curves, margins, trade flows, and sentiment. That constant interplay between macro conditions and company fundamentals defines the asset class. While my coverage spans the full corporate credit spectrum, my focus has gravitated toward distressed situations, where I have built particular expertise in liability management exercises (LMEs), cooperation agreements, and restructurings—among the most complex events in the market.

Over nearly three years at Goldman, I have supported seven senior salespeople, giving me exposure to a large share of the top accounts on the Street. Covering that breadth—while maintaining the account-level depth needed to surface topical, evolving situations in a tailored way—has taught me to adapt my communication and coverage style to maximize commercial effectiveness. A generalist manager may prioritize the primary calendar and daily capital allocation; a distressed fund may build a position in an illiquid name it views as oversold or as hedging into a process where majority holdership dictates the outcome; a hedge fund may weigh expressing a short through senior versus junior debt or CDS. The range of ways a single capital structure can express a view is what I find most compelling about credit as a product—and within these competing agendas, each trader carries distinct execution preferences that I code-switch between in real time.

Beyond secondary intermediation, the new-issue calendar is a core sell-side responsibility, and lower-rated issuers introduce distinct challenges to the syndication process. This part of my day centers on working with traders and analysts to reverse into deals priced to compensate investors for the risk at hand, while navigating an evolving menu of financing options—including private solutions. What has always drawn me to a market-facing role is understanding how companies fund their growth; I have worked on transactions across airlines, medical solutions businesses, and AI data centers.

My interest in markets began in high school through a specialized communications curriculum that drew me to current events. At the Boston College Carroll School of Management, I connected that interest in evolving global trends to financial markets—consistently more focused on the business, industry structure, and capital allocation behind a company than on price action in isolation.

At the same time, the illiquidity of stressed credit has taught me to read trading behavior closely—how positioning, sentiment, and market conditions drive price action beyond fundamentals. The privileged information flow on the sell side is among the most valuable insight we provide clients; I have found these dynamics to be meaningful catalysts and, often, a key contributor to outcomes. The most compelling opportunities tend to emerge when trust and partnership between our desk and our accounts enable correctly timed, well-managed risk transfer. Using that information judiciously is essential when managing two-sided situations.

That trust—across sales, my own traders, and the account base—matters more than ever, as corporate financial engineering and creditor group dynamics through cooperation agreements have made distressed investing increasingly challenging. I work in constant coordination with legal counsel and middle-office teams to structure client protections and ensure proper trade settlement, a detail-oriented responsibility I carry for our most sensitive, high-stakes trades.

Through this work, I have developed a deep appreciation for the analytical rigor, creativity, and conviction required to invest successfully across stressed and distressed credit. I bring a differentiated perspective shaped by years of facilitating risk transfer across a wide range of market participants, understanding how positioning and liquidity drive outcomes, and working through some of the market’s most complex capital structure situations. Just as importantly, I am eager to continue developing as an investor—pairing that market experience with deeper fundamental underwriting and portfolio construction responsibilities.