Someone else with IB experience will be here to add details, but those 20 and 30 year-olds were not running the deal. They would have had someone more senior overseeing them. I'm guessing it was a couple analysts and an associate or VP. Those are very junior people.

Now as the article said, the deal was quite small for GS, so it's likely the amount of time spent on the deal by the senior person was small.

Actually not surprising that GS would let a VP and an associate run this deal. $580MM is small potatoes for Goldman, and it was 99 so they were up to their eyeballs in deals. There was probably a senior banker committee overseeing the deal but they really just rubber stamp stuff and never look at the details. The details in this case were what crushed James Baker's take. Note that a good/experienced banker would advise the client to put in a collar in an all stock deal.