The News: Is Goldman Just Another Bank?

16 December 2009

2 minute read

Goldman Sachs has long been known as the client-focused, long-term-looking financial services company whose reputation, best practices and profits were aspired to by everyone else on Wall Street. While today the reputation and profits are still there, Lloyd Blankfein's Goldman Sachs is about profits first, and all else second. Just like, hints reporter Jenny Anderson in the New York Times, every other investment bank.

It's all about the DNA of traders. For all his public diplomacy, Blankfein is a trader used to moving around huge amounts of money in the chase of quick profits. Under him, "discreet bankers who give advice to corporate clients and help them raise capital - once a major source of earnings for Goldman - have been eclipsed," Anderson writes. Indeed, bankers are under pressure to generate bigger profits from corporate clients.

It is, in the view of many Goldman executives and alumni, a fundamental shift in the firm's approach to business, though not necessarily a bad one. For its part, Goldman Sachs itself sees itself as evolving - with clients leading the way. Said spokesman Lucas van Praag: "This business is all about serving clients, and if you don't evolve, you die."

As Goldman Thrives, Some Say an Ethos Has Faded [NY Times]

Compensation Reforms Not to Burden Goldman, M. Stanley: Analyst [NY Times]

Bank Agency Boosts Budget 35% [WSJ]

S.E.C. to Force Broader Disclosure on Executive Pay [Dealbook]

RBS Ties Its Fortunes Closer to U.K. [WSJ]

Large adviser teams control 80% of wirehouse assets [InvestmentNews]

AUTHORMark Feffer

Insider Comment

1 comments

mx
mxvigil
17 December 2009
Of course GS is just a bank, and a failed bank at that! Posturing, which is to say lying about how they were hedged on their positions with AIG proves how GS operates. Nothing more than an organization that privatizes profit, and allows what it defines as profit no less, and socializes all the losses.
GS people look down their noses at everyone else in the world; and yet it was in fact the Butcher the Baker and the Candlestick maker that got them out of the mess they helped create! We know who does the real work in the world, the men and woman who create and do. GS is a joke, nothing more than a welfare recipient.
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