Meet John F. W. Rogers, Goldman’s Quiet Power Player

John F. W. Rogers is known on Wall Street for four initials and an enviable fact of corporate geography. The F. and W. stand for Francis and William, though why Rogers uses them both is one of several mysteries he has either gone out of his way to cultivate or never seen fit to explain. “Why does he have that extra initial that everybody else doesn’t have?” asks Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs.

If Blankfein truly wanted to find out, he could walk three feet and ask. Rogers’s office in Goldman’s lush, $2.4 billion downtown Manhattan headquarters is right next to Blankfein’s and a few steps away from that of Goldman President Gary D. Cohn. Prior to Blankfein and Cohn’s arrival at the top of the Goldman food chain, Rogers sat next to Hank Paulson, the previous Goldman CEO (1999-2006) whose appointment as U.S. Treasury Secretary Rogers helped grease. Prior to Paulson, Rogers sat next to Goldman CEO Jon Corzine (1994-99). “He is an extraordinarily loyal person,” says former Goldman colleague Jud Sommer, who is now the senior adviser to government affairs at UnitedHealth Group. “But that is a pretty extraordinary segue for any human being in any setting, anywhere, at a professional level.”