A $2 billion PR disaster: Goldman shares drop after resignation letter

Take, for example, McDonald’s two hashtag debacles. Great fodder for the media and the Twitterati, but ultimately a non-starter when it comes to selling Big Macs.

For Goldman Sachs, a PR disaster this week has real consequences—to the tune of $2.15 billion. That’s the amount of market value “wiped out” from Goldman when shares dropped 3.4 percent on Standard & Poor’s index on Wednesday after Greg Smith’s farewell to the company in The New York Times Op-Ed section.

According to Bloomberg, the drop marked “the third-biggest decline in the 81-company Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index.”