Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Type Public (NYSE: GS)
Founded 1869
Founder(s) Marcus Goldman
Headquarters Flag of the United States New York, USA
Area served Worldwide
Key people Lloyd Blankfein
(Chairman) & (CEO)
Industry Finance and insurance
Products Investment banking
Financial services
Market cap US $ 30.76 billion (2008)
Revenue ▲ US $ 87.968 billion (2007)
Operating income ▲ US $ 17.604 billion (2007)
Net income ▲ US $ 11.599 billion (2007)
Total assets ▲ US $ 1.119 trillion (2007)
Total equity ▲ US $ 42.800 billion (2007)
Employees 32,569 (2008)
Website GS.com

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., or simply Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), is a global bank holding company that engages in investment banking, securities trading, and investment management. Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869, and is headquartered in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City at 85 Broad Street but has its secondary office at 30 Hudson Street, Jersey City, New Jersey.[1] Goldman Sachs has offices in all major world financial centers. The firm acts as a financial advisor and money manager for corporations, governments, and wealthy families around the world. Goldman offers its clients mergers & acquisitions advice, underwriting services, asset management, and engages in proprietary trading, and private equity deals. It is a primary dealer in the U.S. Treasury securities market.

Contents

History

Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869 by German Jewish immigrant Marcus Goldman.[2] In 1882, Goldman's son-in-law Samuel Sachs joined the firm which prompted the name change to Goldman Sachs. The company made a name for itself pioneering the use of commercial paper for entrepreneurs and was invited to join the New York Stock Exchange in 1896.

In the early 20th century, Goldman was a major player in establishing the initial public offering market. It managed one of the largest IPOs to date, that of Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1906. It also became one of the first companies to heavily recruit those with MBA degrees from leading business schools, a practice that still continues today.

On December 4, 1928, it launched the Goldman Sachs Trading Corp., a closed-end fund with characteristics similar to that of a Ponzi scheme. The fund failed as a result of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, hurting the firm's reputation for several years afterward.[3]

In 1930, Sidney Weinberg assumed the role of senior partner and shifted Goldman's focus away from trading and towards investment banking. It was Weinberg's actions that helped to restore some of Goldman's tarnished reputation. On the back of Weinberg, Goldman was lead advisor on the Ford Motor Company's IPO in 1956, which at the time was a major coup on Wall Street. Under Weinberg's reign the firm also started an investment research division and a municipal bond department. It also was at this time that the firm became an early innovator in risk arbitrage.

Gus Levy joined the firm in the 1950s as a well known securities trader, which started a trend at Goldman where there would be two powers generally vying for supremacy, one from investment banking and one from securities trading. For most of the 1950s and 1960's, this would be Weinberg and Levy. Levy was a pioneer in block trading and the firm established this trend under his guidance. Due to Weinberg's heavy influence at the firm, it formed an investment banking division in 1956 in an attempt to spread around influence and not focus it all on Weinberg.

In 1969, Levy took over as Senior Partner from Weinberg, and built Goldman's trading franchise once again. It is Levy who is credited with Goldman's famous philosophy of being "long term greedy," which implies that as long as money is made over the long term, trading losses in the short term are not to be worried about. That same year, Weinberg retired from the firm.

Another financial crisis for the firm occurred in 1970, when the Penn Central Railroad Company went bankrupt with over $80 million in commercial paper outstanding, most of it issued by Goldman Sachs. The bankruptcy was large, and the resulting lawsuits threatened the partnership capital and life of the firm. It was this bankruptcy that resulted in credit ratings being created for every issuer of commercial paper today by several credit rating services.[4]

During the 1970s, the firm also expanded in several ways. Under the direction of Senior Partner Stanley R. Miller, it opened its first international office in London in 1970, and created a private wealth division along with a fixed income division in 1972. It also pioneered the "white knight" strategy in 1974 during its attempts to defend Electric Storage Battery against a hostile takeover bid from International Nickel and Goldman's rival Morgan Stanley.[5] This action would boost the firm's reputation as an investment advisor because it pledged to no longer participate in hostile takeovers.

John Weinberg (the son of Sidney Weinberg), and John C. Whitehead assumed roles of co-senior partners in 1976, once again emphasizing the co-leadership at the firm. One of their most famous initiatives was the establishment of the 14 business principles[6] that are still used to this day.

In the 1980s, the firm made a major move by acquiring J. Aron & Company, a commodities trading firm which merged with the Fixed Income division to become known as Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities. J. Aron was a major player in the coffee and gold markets, and the current CEO of Goldman, Lloyd Blankfein, joined the firm as a result of this merger. In 1985 it underwrote the public offering of the Real Estate Investment Trust that owned Rockefeller Center, then the largest REIT offering in history. In accordance with the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the firm also became largely involved in facilitating the global privatization movement by advising companies that were spinning off from their parent governments.

In 1986, the firm formed Goldman Sachs Asset Management, which manages the majority of its mutual funds and hedge funds today. In the same year, the firm also underwrote the IPO of Microsoft, advised General Electric on its acquisition of RCA and joined the London and Tokyo stock exchanges. 1986 also was the year when Goldman became the first United States bank to rank in the top 10 of mergers and acquisitions in the United Kingdom. During the 1980s the firm became the first bank to distribute its investment research electronically and created the first public offering of original issue deep-discount bond.

Robert Rubin and Stephen Friedman assumed the Co-Senior Partnership in 1990 and pledged to focus on globalization of the firm and strengthening the Merger & Acquisition and Trading business lines. During their reign, the firm introduced paperless trading to the New York Stock exchange and lead-managed the first-ever global debt offering by a U.S. corporation. It also launched the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) and opened a Beijing office in 1994. It was this same year that Jon Corzine assumed leadership of the firm following the departure of Rubin and Friedman. The firm joined David Rockefeller and partners in a 50-50 join ownership of Rockefeller Center during 1994, but later sold the shares to Tishman Speyer in 2000. In 1996, Goldman was lead underwriter of the Yahoo! IPO and in 1998 it was global coordinator of the NTT DoCoMo IPO. In 1999, Henry Paulson took over as Senior Partner.

One of the largest events in the firm's history was its own IPO in 1999. The decision to go public was one that the partners debated for decades. In the end, Goldman decided to offer only a small portion of the company to the public, with some 48% still held by the partnership pool.[7] 22% of the company is held by non-partner employees, and 18% is held by retired Goldman partners and two longtime investors, Sumitomo Bank Ltd. and Hawaii's Kamehameha Activities Assn (the investing arm of Kamehameha Schools). This leaves approximately 12% of the company as being held by the public. With the firm's 1999 IPO, Henry Paulson became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the firm.

In 1999 Goldman acquired Hull Trading Company, one of the world's premier market-making firms, for $531 million. More recently, the firm has been busy both in investment banking and in trading activities. It purchased Spear, Leeds, & Kellogg, one of the largest specialist firms on the New York Stock Exchange, for $6.3 billion in September 2000. It also advised on a debt offering for the Government of China and the first electronic offering for the World Bank. It merged with JBWere, the Australian investment bank and opened a full-service broker-dealer in Brazil. It expanded its investments in companies to include Burger King, McJunkin Corporation, and in January 2007, Alliance Atlantis alongside CanWest Global Communications to own sole broadcast rights to the CSI franchise. The firm is also heavily involved in energy trading, including the oil speculation market, on both a principal and agent basis.[8]

Its sizable profits made during the 2007 Subprime mortgage financial crisis led the New York Times to proclaim that Goldman Sachs is without peer in the world of finance.[9] The firm's viability was later called into question as the crisis intensified in September 2008.

In May 2006, Henry Paulson left the firm to serve as U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Lloyd Blankfein was promoted to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Former Goldman employees head the New York Stock Exchange, the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury Department, the White House staff, and firms such as Citigroup and Merrill Lynch.

On September 21, 2008, Goldman Sachs received Federal Reserve approval to transition from an investment bank to a bank holding company. [10]

On September 22, 2008, the last two major investment banks in the United States, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, both confirmed that they would become traditional bank holding companies, bringing an end to the era of investment banking on Wall Street. [11] The Federal Reserve's approval of their bid to become banks ends the ascendancy of the securities firms, 75 years after Congress separated them from deposit-taking lenders, and caps weeks of chaos that sent Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy and led to the rushed sale of Merrill Lynch & Co. to Bank of America Corp. [12]

Corporate affairs

Goldman Sachs Tower in Jersey City

As of 2006, Goldman Sachs employed 26,467 people worldwide. It reported earnings of US$9.34 billion and record earnings per share of $19.69.[13] It was reported that the average total compensation per employee in 2006 was US$622,000.[14] However, this number represents the arithmetic mean of total compensation and is highly skewed upwards as several hundred of the top earners command the majority of the Bonus Pools, leaving the median that most employees earn well below this number.[15] In Business Week's recent release of the Best Places to Launch a Career 2008, Goldman Sachs was ranked #4 out of 119 total companies on the list. [6] The current Chief Executive Officer is Lloyd C. Blankfein. The company ranks #1 in Annual Net Income when compared with 86 peers in the Investment Services sector. Blankfein earned a $67.9 million bonus in his first year. He chose to receive "some" cash unlike present United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson, his predecessor who chose to take his bonus entirely in company stock.[16]

Recently Goldman Sachs has been increasingly involved in both advising and brokering deals to privatize major highways by selling them off to foreign investors. In addition to advising Indiana on the Toll Road deal, Goldman Sachs has worked with Texas governor Rick Perry's administration on privatization projects, and according to John Schmidt, the former adviser to the Chicago mayor's office, it was a Goldman Sachs representative who first pitched the city on the idea of leasing out the Skyway. Goldman Sachs has played a major role in advising states on how to structure privatization deals—even while positioning itself to invest in the toll road market. Conflicts of interest in such transactions are difficult to quantify. [17]

Goldman Sachs is divided into three core businesses.

Investment banking

Investment Banking is divided into two divisions and includes Financial Advisory (mergers and acquisitions, investitures, corporate defense activities, restructurings and spin-offs) and Underwriting (public offerings and private placements of equity, equity-related and debt instruments). Goldman Sachs is one of the leading investment banks, appearing in league tables. In mergers and acquisitions, it gained fame historically by advising clients on how to avoid hostile takeovers, moves generally viewed as unfriendly to shareholders of targeted companies. Goldman Sachs, for a long time during the 1980s, was the only major investment bank with a strict policy against helping to initiate a hostile takeover, which increased Goldman's reputation immensely among sitting management teams at the time. The investment banking segment accounts for around 17 percent of Goldman Sachs' revenues.[18]

Trading & Principal Investments

Trading and Principal Investments is the largest of the three core segments, and is the company's profit center.[19] The segment is divided into three divisions and includes Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities (trading in interest rate and credit products, mortgage-backed securities and loans, currencies and commodities, structured and derivative products), Equities (trading in equities, equity-related products, equity derivatives, structured products and executing client trades in equities, options, and Futures contracts on world markets), and Principal Investments (merchant banking investments and funds). This segment consists of the revenues and profit gained from the Bank's trading activities, both on behalf of its clients (known as flow trading) and for its own account (known as proprietary trading).

Most trading done by Goldman is not speculative, but rather an attempt to profit from bid-ask spreads in the process of acting as a market maker. Around 68 percent of Goldman's revenues and profits are derived from this area.[20] Upon its IPO, Goldman predicted that this segment would not grow as fast as its Investment Banking division and would be responsible for a shrinking proportion of earnings. The opposite has been true however, resulting in Lloyd Blankfein's appointment to President and Chief Operating Officer after John Thain's departure to run the NYSE and John L. Thornton's departure for an academic position in China.

Asset management and securities services

Asset Management and Securities Services is a rapidly growing business for Goldman as it gains market share. It is separated into two divisions, and includes Asset Management, which provides large institutions and very wealthy individuals with investment advisory, financial planning services (Private Wealth Management & AYCO), and the management of mutual funds, as well as the so-called alternative investments (hedge funds, funds of funds, infrastructure funds, real estate funds, and private equity funds). The Securities Services division provides prime brokerage, financing services, and securities lending to mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, foundations, and High net worth individuals. This segment accounts for around 19 percent of Goldman's earnings .

David Blood is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

In 2006, the Goldman Sachs Asset Management hedge fund was the largest in the United States with $29.5 billion under management.[21] As of 2007, the fund was valued at $32.5 billion, the second-largest fund hedge fund after competitor JP Morgan's $33.1 billion fund.[22][23]

In August 2007, it emerged that Goldman had to spend $2 billion to rescue its own Global Equity Opportunities hedge fund from "significant market dislocation".[24]

GS Capital Partners

GS Capital Partners is the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs. It has invested over $17 billion in the 20 years from 1986 to 2006. One of the most prominent funds is the GS Capital Partners V fund, which comprises over $8.5 billion of equity.[25] On April 23, 2007, Goldman closed GS Capital Partners VI with $20 billion in committed capital, $11 billion from qualified institutional and high net worth clients and $9 billion from the firm and its employees. GS Capital Partners VI is the current primary investment vehicle for Goldman Sachs to make large, privately negotiated equity investments.[26]

Major Assets (GS Group)

Predictions

In December 2005, four years after its report on the emerging "BRIC" economies (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), Goldman Sachs named its "Next Eleven"[27] list of countries, using macroeconomic stability, political maturity, openness of trade and investment policies and quality of education as criteria: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam.[28]

Corporate citizenship

Goldman Sachs has received favorable press coverage for conducting business and implementing internal policies related to reversing global climate change.[29] According to the company web site, the Goldman Sachs Foundation has given $94 million in grants since 1999, with the goal of promoting youth education worldwide.[30] The company also has been on Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For list since the list was launched in 1998.[31]

In November 2007, Goldman Sachs established a donor-advised fund called Goldman Sachs Gives that donates to charitable organizations around the world, while increasing their maximum employee donation match to $20,000.[32]

Charitable Services Group

Goldman Sachs Foundation

Notable alumni

Criticism and controversy

In 1986, David Brown was convicted of passing inside information to Ivan Boesky on a takeover deal.[35] Robert Freeman, who was a senior Partner, the Head of Risk Arbitrage, and a protégé of Robert Rubin, was also convicted of insider trading, with his own account and with the firm's.[36]

On November 11, 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that Goldman Sachs, which earned $25 M from underwroting California bonds, had advised other clients to "short" those bonds. Shorting is essentially betting that the state will default on the bonds, which serves to drive up the cost of the issue to the state.

Goldman in the mortgage market

Actions in the 2007- subprime mortgage crisis

Despite the 2007 subprime mortgage crisis, Goldman was able to profit from the collapse in subprime mortgage bonds in the summer of 2007 by selling subprime mortgage-backed securities short. Two Goldman traders, Michael Swenson and Josh Birnbaum, are credited with bearing responsibility for the firm's large profits during America's sub-prime mortgage crisis.[37] The pair, who are part of Goldman's structured products group in New York, made a profit of $4bn by "betting" on a collapse in the sub-prime market, and shorting mortgage-related securities. By summer of 2007, they persuaded colleagues to see their point of view and talked around skeptical risk management executives [38]. The firm initially avoided large subprime writedowns, and achieved a net profit due to significant losses on non-prime securitized loans being offset by gains on short mortgage positions.

Goldman Sachs' newest acquisitions are to include the subprime portfolio of imploded mortgage company Popular Financial Holdings late in the third quarter of 2008. [39]

Detractors believe that Goldman wasn't quite as careful with its clients' money as it was with its own—its flagship Global Alpha hedge fund tumbled 37% in the global credit crunch.[38] As most individual investments of hedge funds are not made public, however, no one can know exactly what assets the firm traded during the period leading up to the credit crisis.

Goldman Sachs' Alternative Mortgages Products

In 2006, Goldmans Sachs' mortgages-bonds divisions - Alternative Mortgage Products (knowns ass GSAMP for short) - issued 83 home-loan-backed bonds, valued at $44.5 billion. In the subprime sector, it grew its business by 59% from 2005, offloading some $12.9 billion on to fund managers.

According to Inside Mortgage Finance, that made GSAMP the 15th biggest issuer of subprime-backed bonds in 2006. According to the website ABAlert.com (Asset-backed Alert), Goldman Sachs was one of the top 10 sellers of Collateralized Mortgage Obligations (CMO's) and may have sold about $100 billion in CMO's over the last two and a half years. [40]

But, by the start of the third quarter this year, those securities were being downgraded by the credit ratings agencies faster than any other subprime lender. According to a Reuters report, Citigroup's research (June 22, 2007), stated "portions of Goldman's GSAMP-issued bonds, which include subprime loans from a variety of lenders, have been downgraded a combined 69 times by Standard & Poor's and Moody's Investors Service in the year through June 15. Sixty of the GSAMP downgrades refer to classes from 2006 bonds," Citigroup added, and Allan Sloane in The Washington Post stated that one of Goldman's 2006 crop - the GSAMP Trust 2006- S3 - may actually be "the worst deal…floated by a top-tier firm." One in every six of the 8,274 mortgages bundled together in GSAMP Trust 2006-S3 was already in default 18 months later. Whoever bought the S3 bonds will have either taken a 100% loss, or are waiting to sell it on at a heavy discount. [41]

Works about Goldman Sachs

References

  1. ↑ "Goldman Sachs— Google Maps". Retrieved on 2007-01-17.
  2. ↑ Spiro, Leah Nathans; Stanley Reed (1997-12-22). "INSIDE THE MONEY MACHINE–In a big-is-all business, Goldman vows to go it alone", BusinessWeek, The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  3. ↑ Fox, Justin (2005-05-16). "GOLDMAN: WE RUN WALL STREET", Fortune magazine, Cable News Network LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  4. ↑ Hahn, Thomas K.. "Commercial Paper". in Timothy Q. Cook and Robert K. Laroche editors (PDF). Instruments of the Money Market (Seventh Edition ed.). Richmond, Virginia: Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. http://www.richmondfed.org/publications/economic_research/instruments_of_the_money_market/ch09.cfm. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  5. ↑ Rosenkrantz, Holly; Newton-Small, Jay (2004-11-23). "Bush Economic Adviser Friedman to Resign, Aide Says", Bloomberg.com. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  6. ↑ "Business Principles". The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Retrieved on 2008-01-24.
  7. ↑ Spiro, Leah Nathans (1999-05-17). "Goldman Sachs: How Public Is This IPO?", BusinessWeek Online, The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc.. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  8. ↑ "Perhaps 60% of today's oil price is pure speculation". Global Research. Retrieved on 2008-06-09.
  9. ↑ "Goldman Sachs marches on with Bush's candidate for World Bank". The Independent. Retrieved on 2008-05-15.
  10. ↑ "Goldman Sachs to be regulated by Fed". Bloomberg. Retrieved on 2008-09-21.
  11. ↑ Wall Street in crisis: Last banks standing give up investment bank status, The Guardian, September 22, 2008
  12. ↑ Goldman, Morgan Stanley Bring Down Curtain on an Era, bloomberg, September 22, 2008
  13. ↑ "GOLDMAN SACHS REPORTS RECORD EARNINGS PER COMMON SHARE OF $19.69 FOR 2006" (PDF) p. 1. The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (2006-12-12). Retrieved on 2007-01-17.
  14. ↑ Gavin, Robert (2006-12-12). "Good deal: Average Goldman Sachs employee makes $622,000", The Boston Globe, The New York Times Company. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  15. ↑ "Please, Sir, I want Some More". New York Magazine (2005-12-05). Retrieved on 2007-08-24.
  16. ↑ Harper, Christine (2007-12-21). "Goldman Awards Blankfein a Record $67.9 Million Bonus (Update1)", Bloomberg.com. Retrieved on 2007-12-21. 
  17. ↑ Schulman, Daniel (2007-01-01). "The Highwaymen", Mother Jones. Retrieved on 2007-04-30. 
  18. ↑ Based on SEC filings for the last twelve months ending May 31, 2008.
  19. ↑ Goldman Had More Trading-Loss Days Than Morgan Stanley, Lehman (Bloomberg.com)
  20. ↑ Goldman Had More Trading-Loss Days Than Morgan Stanley, Lehman (Bloomberg.com)
  21. ↑ Pasha, Shaheen (2006-10-06). "Banks' love affair with hedge funds", CNNMoney.com. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  22. ↑ "The List: The World's Largest Hedge Funds", Foreign Policy (September,2007). Retrieved on 2008-01-18. 
  23. ↑ Mackintosh, James (2007-05-24). "Biggest hedge funds tighten grip", Financial Times. Retrieved on 2008-01-18. 
  24. ↑ Goldman pumps in $2bn to bail out hedge fund (Times Online)
  25. ↑ >"GS Capital Partners". The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Retrieved on 2007-02-08.
  26. ↑ >"GS Capital Partners VI". Business Wire.
  27. ↑ Goldman Sachs Paper No.134 Relevant Emerging Markets
  28. ↑ Khan, Jasim Uddin (2005-12-15). "Bangladesh on Goldman Sachs 'Next Eleven' list", The Daily Star. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  29. ↑ "The Street Turns Green", Newsweek, Newsweek, Inc. (2007). Retrieved on 2007-11-23. 
  30. ↑ "The Goldman Sachs Foundation". The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Retrieved on 2007-05-18.
  31. ↑ "100 Best Companies to Work 2007, All Stars", [[Fortune (magazine)|Fortune]] (2007). Retrieved on 2007-05-18. 
  32. ↑ Goldman Sachs Establishes Goldman Sachs Gives Charitable Fund
  33. ↑ Bank of Canada Press Release
  34. ↑ The opaque and unaccountable Mr. Hide
  35. ↑ Worthy, Ford S.; Brett Duval Fromson and Lorraine Carson (1986-12-22). "WALL STREET'S SPREADING SCANDAL", Fortune Magazine, Cable News Network LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  36. ↑ Thomas, Landon Jr. (2002-02-18). "Cold Call", New York Magazine, New York Magazine Holdings LLC. Retrieved on 2007-01-17. 
  37. ↑ Time Online, December 19, 2007, [1]
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 The Guardian, December 21, 2007, [2]
  39. ↑ Market Watch,Popular Announces Substantial Sale of Loan and Servicing Assets of its U.S. Mortgage Unit Popular Financial Holdings to Goldman Sachs,[3]
  40. ↑ Finfacts Ireland, 'How Goldman Sachs made money from US subprime mortgages on the way up and down', December 4, 2007 [4]
  41. ↑ The Washington Post, An Unsavory Slice of Subprime, October 16, 2007 [5].

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