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Analysis: Can Goldman, Morgan Stanley recover moxie? Goldman Succession May Be Hurdle for Cohn. Michael Ovitz, the former Hollywood agent whose company was said to have created enemies “the way a hurricane produces raindrops,” first met Gary Cohn over lunch at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s headquarters in June 2009. The two men, one the founder of the most powerful talent agency in the entertainment business, the other president of the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, have been in daily e-mail contact since, Ovitz said. They talk by phone three or four times a week. During a trip to the Caribbean in December, Ovitz, now an investor, visited Cohn on the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Ovitz, who received a severance package estimated at $140 million when he was fired in 1996 after 15 months as president of Walt Disney Co., said he’s impressed with Cohn. Lloyd C. Lloyd C. Close Open Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Lloyd C. Blankfein, 56, who marked his fifth anniversary as head of the New York-based bank on June 28, said he doesn’t have plans to step down. Companies / Banks - Goldman Sachs facing federal investigation. Companies / Banks - Goldman reshuffles investment bank top ranks. Companies / Banks - Spectre of DoJ charges haunts Goldman. Financials - Investor appetite for risk boosts Goldman. Goldman Traders Lost Money One Day in Quarter. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), the U.S. bank that makes more than half its revenue from trading, lost money in that business on one day during the first quarter, its best record since posting zero days of losses a year ago.

After losing money on 13 days in the fourth quarter, Goldman Sachs’s traders lost between $25 million and $50 million on one occasion in the first quarter, according to the New York- based firm’s quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. They generated more than $100 million on 32 days out of 62 total days, the filing showed. Goldman Sachs’s performance beats Morgan Stanley (MS), whose traders lost money on three days and made more than $100 million on 10 days, according to a filing yesterday. It falls short of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Bank of America Corp. Goldman Sachs reported zero days of trading losses during the first quarter of last year, the first such perfect quarter in the firm’s history. Goldman Sachs Chief Blankfein Faces Shareholders Amid ‘Lingering Problems’ Related Cohan Interview on Goldman's Shareholder Meeting Lloyd C.

Blankfein, chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), has sought to quell shareholder concerns about its bonuses and business practices at the past two annual meetings. As the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets hosts investors for the first time at its building in Jersey City, New Jersey, shareholders are still questioning Goldman Sachs’s actions during the financial crisis, executive pay and business model. “They really do have to reshape the firm and get the message out there that ‘Look, here’s what we’re going to look like going forward,’” said Peter Sorrentino, a senior portfolio manager at Huntington Asset Advisors in Cincinnati, which manages $14.8 billion, including almost 135,000 Goldman Sachs shares. Goldman Sachs was the most-profitable securities firm when Blankfein, 56, took the helm almost five years ago.

. $550 Million Settlement The questions didn’t end there. ‘Sins of the Past’ Cash Bonuses. Comment / Op-Ed Columnists - Two chiefs can be wiser than one. Goldman's Net Drops as Firm Avoids Risk. Companies / Banks - Goldman beats forecast despite 72% drop. Goldman Sachs Charges Up to Justice Department, Levin Says. The U.S. Justice Department and regulators will have to determine whether employees and executives of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) violated any laws when they traded securities tied to the housing market and testified to Congress about the transactions, Senator Carl Levin said.

The Michigan Democrat, who released the findings of a two- year inquiry into the 2008 financial crisis yesterday, said today in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart with Carol Massar and Matt Miller” that he wanted to send the report to federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lawmakers don’t have the authority to declare whether the activities were illegal, he said. “That is not for Congress to determine whether or not a crime was committed or whether or not he violated the security laws,” Levin said, referring to Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein.

‘Truthful and Accurate’ Coburn Statement -- With assistance from Phil Mattingly in Washington. Goldman Sachs Misled Congress After Duping Clients: Levin. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) misled clients and Congress about the firm’s bets on securities tied to the housing market, the chairman of the U.S. Senate panel that investigated the causes of the financial crisis said. Senator Carl Levin, releasing the findings of a two-year inquiry yesterday, said he wants the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to examine whether Goldman Sachs violated the law by misleading clients who bought the complex securities known as collateralized debt obligations without knowing the firm would benefit if they fell in value. The Michigan Democrat also said federal prosecutors should review whether to bring perjury charges against Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and other current and former employees who testified in Congress last year.

Levin said they denied under oath that Goldman Sachs took a financial position against the mortgage market solely for its own profit, statements the senator said were untrue. Close. Goldman Traders Tried to Manipulate Derivatives Market in '07, Report Says. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) mortgage traders tried to manipulate prices of derivatives linked to subprime home loans in May 2007 for their own benefit, according to a U.S. Senate report. Company documents show traders led by Michael J. Swenson sought to encourage a “short squeeze” by putting artificially low prices on derivatives that would gain in value as mortgage securities fell, according to the report yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The idea, abandoned after market conditions worsened, was to drive holders of such credit-default swaps to sell and help Goldman Sachs traders buy at reduced prices, according to the report. “We began to encourage this squeeze, with plans of getting very short again,” Deeb Salem, a trader in the structured product group, said in a 2007 self-evaluation excerpted in the report. Salem “claimed that he had wrongly worded his self- evaluation,” the report said. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.' Goldman Sachs Group Inc.' Close Open Joshua S. Goldman Sachs Seeks to Buy Remainder of Australian Unit. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) plans to buy out its Australian partners to take full control of its business in Asia’s third-biggest investment-banking market. The Wall Street firm is seeking the remaining 55 percent of Goldman Sachs & Partners Australia Group Holdings Pty and needs approval from 75 percent of those shareholders, Goldman Sachs said in a statement today, without giving details of the proposal.

The offer values the whole business at between A$800 million ($835 million) and A$1.2 billion, the Australian Financial Review said. “This is the next logical step,” said Alastair Walton, who was the co-chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs’ Australian business and helped create the current venture in 2003. “The key thing the firm must do is maintain its Australian cultural identity, which is critical in this marketplace.”

Walton is now chairman of independent advisory firm BKK Partners Pty in Sydney. Sliding Rank Minority Owner Commission Earnings. Companies / Banks - Goldman doubled CEO bonus for 2010. Goldman Special Situation Profit Seen at Risk With Volcker Rule. For Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS)’s Special Situations Group, disasters can be a source of some of the biggest profits. Now the secretive investing operation faces its own potential calamity. Goldman Sachs already has shut two units that made bets with the company’s money because such proprietary trading by banks will be prohibited under the Volcker rule approved by Congress last year. Still, the Special Situations Group, known as SSG, continues to make investments and named a new global head last month.

Executives have argued that SSG shouldn’t be affected because it’s more of a lending than a trading business. Created during the late 1990s, SSG invests the bank’s money in the debt and equity of troubled companies and makes loans to high-risk borrowers. The effort to defend it illustrates how important the business is to Goldman Sachs and may be a test of how flexible regulators will be in defining proprietary trading. Twice the Profit Richard M. Japanese Golf Courses Volcker Restrictions.

Goldman's Love Affair With Voice Mail. Susan Walsh/Associated PressLloyd C. Blankfein, voice mail fan. 2:40 p.m. | Updated Some people say it with flowers. Others prefer e-mail. Lloyd C. Blankfein, once a BlackBerry addict, now says voice mail is his chosen method of communication. In court on Wednesday, testifying at the insider trading trial of Raj Rajaratnam, Mr. “Once I am informed, I am not looking to necessarily read about it,” he testified. On the one hand, this is hardly surprising. Roy Zuckerberg, a senior executive at Goldman Sachs during the 1980s and ’90s, used to tell trainees that he would do more than an hour of voice mail a night.

Mr. “It was a glib and totally insensitive response, which is totally at odds with the way I think about the people here,” he told employees in a voice mail. Goldman’s preference for talking over writing was underscored by e-mails that emerged as a result of investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission and by Congress.

But Mr. He was an early adopter of the BlackBerry. Goldman Sachs's Slow Start in M.&A. When it comes to merger advising, Goldman Sachs is like a venerable sports franchise that has stumbled early in the season. Thomson Reuters’ preliminary M. &A. advising league table for the first quarter shows Goldman in 10th place for deals in the United States. Last year, Goldman took the crown for both the United States and the world. Morgan Stanley, Goldman’s traditional rival, is at the top for the first quarter. But possibly more galling to Goldman is that much smaller advisory firms — Evercore Partners (No 3.), Lazard (No. 8) and Rothschild (No. 9) — are also above it in the league table.

The biggest United States deal so far this year that Goldman gets credit for is the proposed $10 billion NYSE Euronext-Deutsche Börse merger — and in that instance Goldman was not even the primary adviser but among the financial firms that provided “further financial advice.” The main reasons for Goldman’s underperformance are clear. Goldman, with a leading 7.2 percent share of the United States M. Goldman Partnership Memo Stirs Succession Talk. Simon Dawson/Bloomberg NewsGary D. Cohn of Goldman Sachs. There is nothing like a change in the leadership of Goldman Sachs‘s influential partnership committee to fan rumors of succession at the influential Wall Street bank. Goldman sent a brief e-mail to employees on Monday announcing that Michael S.

Sherwood would succeed the firm’s president, Gary D. Mr. The committee runs the partnership selection at the firm. Partners are selected once every two years and are vetted for months leading up to the actual announcement of the new class of partners. The partnership committee is made up of a number of senior executives and is chaired by a senior officer. Chairing the committee is a lot of work and Goldman changes the chairman from time to time, so it doesn’t necessarily mean Mr.

But it is good news for Mr. One reason to tap Mr. Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Goldman to buy Buffett's $5 billion preferred shares. Companies / Banks - Scott to leave Goldman board after just a year. Financials - Goldman looks to exit mortgage servicing. Companies / Financial Services - Top Goldman executives on Galleon witness list. Goldman's Blankfein Agrees to Be Rajaratnam Trial Witness. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein agreed to be a prosecution witness in Galleon Group LLC co-founder Raj Rajaratnam’s insider trading trial next week, said a person briefed on the matter.

Blankfein, 56, may not testify because prosecutors typically line up potential witnesses before a trial who aren’t later called on, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. Rajaratnam is at the center of the largest crackdown on hedge-fund insider trading in U.S. history. The Sri Lankan-born billionaire is charged with earning $45 million from confidential information leaked by corporate insiders and hedge fund traders. If convicted, the 57-year-old could spend as long as 20 years in prison on the fraud charges. He denies wrongdoing, saying he based his trades on Galleon research. Timeline Issue “There’s no question it’s a timeline issue,” Stoltmann said in an interview. Close Open Photographer: Rick Maiman/Bloomberg ‘Powerful Evidence’

Goldman's Model Evokes Blood-Sucking Leeches: Caroline Baum. Macroeconomics really is stuck in the Dark Ages. Take “fiscal stimulus,” for example, the idea that the government can step in to fill the void when the private sector isn’t spending and boost economic growth in the process. Economists have been debating the pros and cons of fiscal stimulus since the 1930s, when John Maynard Keynes diagnosed the problem as one of inadequate private investment and prescribed public spending, financed by borrowing, as the cure. The discussion hasn’t advanced very much in eight decades. Sure, economists have devised elegant mathematical models that purport to show that $1 of government purchases translates into -- take your pick -- no increase in gross domestic product (the multiplier is zero, according to Harvard’s Robert Barro) or $1.50 of GDP (a multiplier of 1.5, according to Berkeley’s Christina Romer, who was chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers when the $814 billion stimulus was crafted in 2009).

Keynesians All Wrong on Everything. Companies / Financial Services - Ex-Goldman director in insider case. Companies / Banks - Goldman faces legal bill of up to $3.4bn. Companies / Banks - Goldman winds down proprietary trading arm. Companies / Financial Services - Tourre to argue US cannot try him for fraud.

Companies / Banks - Goldman’s plans for cash pile hit by asset price rises. Goldman Boosts Base Salaries of Partners. Companies / Banks - Blankfein awarded $12.6m in shares. Companies / Asia-Pacific - Evans named Goldman emerging markets head. Blankfein Flunks Asset Management as Clark Vows No More Goldman. On Jan. 2, Jim Clark, a founder of such technology icons as Netscape Communications Corp. and Silicon Graphics Inc., was at home in Palm Beach, Florida, when he got an e-mail from an executive at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s private wealth management division.

Goldman was offering Clark a chance to invest in the closely held social-networking company Facebook Inc. The deal -- through a fund overseen by Goldman Sachs Asset Management -- was being offered to other Goldman investors at the same time, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its March issue. The firm would levy a 4 percent placement fee on clients, plus a half percent “expense reserve” fee. It would also require investors to surrender 5 percent of any profits, known as “carried interest,” according to a Goldman Sachs document. Clark, 66, turned Goldman down. “I don’t think it’s reasonable,” Clark says. . $840 Billion Clark isn’t the only investor unhappy with Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Turnover at the Top Separate Accounts Lag. Goldman's Long Bond Shows Inflation Concerns Are Waning. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s first sale of 30-year bonds in more than three years signals waning investor concern that inflation is accelerating. The debt soared in its first full day of trading.

The fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets received $9 billion in orders for its $2.5 billion of notes sold on Jan. 21, according to Mizuho Securities USA. The 6.25 percent senior bonds priced to yield 170 basis points more than similar- maturity Treasuries, at the low end of a 5-basis-point range marketed by the firm, data compiled by Bloomberg show. Economists are lowering forecasts for consumer price rises next year, with the median estimate declining to 1.9 percent this month from 2 percent in December, according to a Bloomberg survey.

The record $13 billion auction of 10-year Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities on Jan. 20 attracted lower-than- average demand and the difference between yields on 10-year notes and TIPS narrowed the most since May. Default Swaps Fall Ford, AmeriCredit Inflation Bets. Facebook Flop Riles Goldman Clients. Comment / Opinion - Goldman’s self-improvement plan is likely to falter. Goldman to exclude U.S. from Facebook placement. Goldman Sachs's Hatzius, Wilson to Run Economics After O'Neill. Columnists / Lucy Kellaway - Finnish lesson on principles for Goldman. Proprietary Trading Hard to Define. Companies / Banks - Goldman’s republished results present a new picture. Companies / Banks - Goldman reveals fresh crisis losses.

Comment - Goldman’s pieties go too far. Goldman opens books to scrutiny but no wider shake-up. Goldman Sachs Bankers, Ascendant Again. UK / Politics & policy - No knock-out blow but match not over. Financials - US Senate report to criticise Goldman. Companies / Banks - Goldman ramps up oversight process. Goldman Unveils Overhaul of Financial Reporting, Client Communications.