Top Goldman Traders Caught Up in Tango With Flamboyant Financier

The 223-foot yacht sat off the sunburnt Sardinia coast as top executives of Goldman Sachs climbed aboard.

It was August 2015, and Michael Daffey and John Storey arrived with their wives to cultivate a seemingly unlikely client: Lars Windhorst, a controversial German financier whose checkered history had, at least for a time, left many in financial services wary of doing business with him.

That summer, his reputation was on the mend and Goldman Sachs was ready to explore a relationship -- one that’s left some of its most senior traders tangled in a legal fight with one of their own. ...