â??Questions have been raised that go to the heart of this institutionâ??s most fundamental value: how we treat our clients.â? â?? Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman Sachsâ??s C.E.O., at the firmâ??s annual meeting in May
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's leader, has been in Washington explaining the firm's divergent roles.
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Gary Schaer, a New Jersey assemblyman, complained to Goldman about its urging speculators to buy insurance on the state's bonds, essentially betting against them. Goldman underwrote debt for the state.
Goldman executives testified last month. From left, Daniel Sparks, a former partner who ran the mortgage department; Joshua Birnbaum, a former managing director in the structured products group; Michael Swenson, a managing director in the structured products group, and Fabrice Tourre, a vice president who is a subject of an S.E.C. fraud suit.
Senator Carl Levin questioned Goldman Sachs executives on why the firm sold securities it thought very little of.
As the housing crisis mounted in early 2007, Goldman Sachs was busy selling risky, mortgage-related securities issued by its longtime client, Washington Mutual, a major bank based in Seattle.
Although Goldman had decided months earlier that the mortgage market was headed for a fall, it continued to sell the WaMu securities to investors. While Goldman put its imprimatur on that offering, traders in the same Goldman unit were not so sanguine about WaMuâ??s prospects: they were betting that the value of WaMuâ??s stock and other securities would decline.
Goldmanâ??s wager against its customerâ??s stock â?? a position known as a â??shortâ? â?? was large enough that it would have generated at least $10 million in profits if WaMu collapsed, according to documents recently released by Congress. And by mid-May, Goldmanâ??s bet against other WaMu securities had made Goldman $2.5 million, the documents show.
WaMu eventually did collapse under the weight of souring mortgage loans; federal regulators seized it in September 2008, making it the biggest bank failure in American history.
Goldmanâ??s bets against WaMu, wagers that took place even as it helped WaMu feed a housing frenzy that Goldman had already lost faith in, are examples of conflicting roles that trouble its critics and some former clients. While Goldman has legions of satisfied customers and maintains that it puts its clients first, it also sometimes appears to work against the interests of those same clients when opportunities to make trading profits off their financial troubles arise.
Goldmanâ??s access to client information can also give its traders an advantage that many of the firmâ??s competitors lack. And because betting against a companyâ??s shares or its debt can create an atmosphere of doubt about a companyâ??s financial standing, Goldman because of its size and its position in the market can help make the success of some of its wagers faits accomplis.
Lucas van Praag, a Goldman spokesman, declined to say how much the firm earned on its bets against WaMuâ??s stock. He said his firm lost money on its bets against the other WaMu securities. In an e-mail reply to questions for this article, he said there was nothing improper about Goldmanâ??s wagers against any of its clients. â??Shorting stock or buying credit protection in order to manage exposures are typical tools to help a firm reduce its risk.â?
WaMu is not the only Goldman client the firm bet against as the mortgage disaster gained steam. Documents released by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations show that Goldmanâ??s mortgage unit also wagered against Bear Stearns and Countrywide Financial, two longstanding clients of the firm. These documents are only related to the mortgage unit and it is unknown what other bets the rest of the firm made.
Goldman also bet against the American International Group, which insured Goldmanâ??s mortgage bonds, and National City, a Cleveland bank the firm had advised on a sale of a big subprime mortgage lender to Merrill Lynch.
While no one has accused Goldman of anything illegal involving WaMu, National City, A.I.G. or the other clients it bet against, potential conflicts inherent in Wall Streetâ??s business model are at the core of many of the investigations that state and federal authorities are conducting. Transactions entered into as the mortgage market fizzled may turn out to have been perfectly legal. Nevertheless, they have raised concerns among investors and analysts about the extent to which a variety of Wall Street firms put their own interests ahead of their clientsâ??.
â??Now itâ??s all about the score. Just make the score, do the deal. Move on to the next one. Thatâ??s the trader culture,â? said Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University and former counsel to the Federal Reserve Board. â??Their business model has completely blurred the difference between executing trades on behalf of customers versus executing trades for themselves. Itâ??s a huge problem.â?
Goldman has come under particularly intense scrutiny on such issues since the financial and economic downturn began gathering momentum in 2007, in part because it has done so well, in part because of the power it wields in Washington and on Wall Street, and in part because regulators have taken a keen interest in its dealings.
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil fraud suit against the firm last month, contending that it misled clients who bought a mortgage security that the regulators said was intended to fail. Goldman has said it did nothing wrong and is fighting the case. Legislators in Washington are also considering financial reforms that limit potential conflicts of interest in the way that firms like Goldman trade and invest their own money.
Still, Goldmanâ??s many hats â?? trader, adviser, underwriter, matchmaker of buyers and sellers, and salesperson â?? has left some clients feeling bruised or so wary that they have sometimes avoided doing business with the bank.
During the early stages of the mortgage crisis, Goldman seems to have unnerved WaMuâ??s former chief executive, Kerry K. Killinger, according to an e-mail message that Congressional investigators released.
In that message, Mr. Killinger noted that he had avoided retaining Goldmanâ??s investment bankers in the fall of 2007 because he was concerned about how the firm would use knowledge it gleaned from that relationship. He pointed out that Goldman was â??shorting mortgages big timeâ? even while it had been advising Countrywide, a major mortgage lender.
â??I donâ??t trust Goldy on this,â? he wrote. â??They are smart, but this is swimming with the sharks.â?
One of Mr. Killingerâ??s lieutenants at Washington Mutual felt the same way. â??We always need to worry a little about Goldman,â? that person wrote in an e-mail message, â??because we need them more than they need us and the firm is run by traders.â?
Mr. Killinger does not appear to have known that Goldman was selling short his companyâ??s shares. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. But because Bear Stearns, National City, Countrywide and WaMu all were hammered by the mortgage crisis, any bets Goldman made against each of those firmâ??s shares were likely to have been profitable.
Even though Goldman had frequently shorted the shares of other firms, it, along with another bank, Morgan Stanley, successfully lobbied the S.E.C. in 2008, at the height of the mortgage collapse, to forbid traders from shorting financial shares, sparing its own stock.
CONFLICT OF PRINCIPLES
As Trading Arm Grows, a Clash of Purpose
When new hires begin working at Goldman, they are told to follow 14 principles that outline the firmâ??s best practices. â??Our clientsâ?? interests always come firstâ? is principle No. 1. The 14th principle is: â??Integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business.â?
But some former insiders, who requested anonymity because of concerns about retribution from the firm, say Goldman has a 15th, unwritten principle that employees openly discuss.
It urges Goldman workers to embrace conflicts and argues that they are evidence of a healthy tension between the firm and its customers. If you are not embracing conflicts, the argument holds, you are not being aggressive enough in generating business.
Mr. van Praag said the firm was â??unawareâ? of this 15th principle, adding that â??any business in any industry, has potential conflicts and we all have an obligation to manage them effectively.â?
But a former Goldman partner, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the companyâ??s view of customers had changed in recent years. Under Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldmanâ??s chief executive, and a cadre of top lieutenants who have ramped up the firmâ??s trading operation, conflict avoidance had shifted to conflict management, this person said. Along the way, he said, the firmâ??s executives have come to see customers more as competitors they trade against than as clients.
In fact, Mr. Blankfein and Goldman are quick to remind critics that Wall Street deals with sophisticated investors, who they say can protect themselves. At the bankâ??s shareholder meeting earlier this month, Mr. Blankfein said, â??We deal with the most demanding and, in some cases, cynical clients.â?
Even Goldmanâ??s mortgage department compliance training manual from 2007 acknowledges the challenges posed by the firmâ??s clients-come-first rule. Loyalty to customers â??is not always straightforwardâ? given the multiple financial hats Goldman wears in the market, the manual notes.
In addition, the manual explains how Goldman uses information harvested from clients who discuss the market, indicate interest in securities or leave orders consisting of â??pretrade information.â? The manual notes that Goldman also can deploy information it receives from a wide range of other sources, including data providers, other brokerage firms and securities exchanges.
â??We continuously make markets and take risk based on a unique window on the market which is a mosaic constructed of all of the pieces of data received,â? the manual said.
Mr. van Praag, the Goldman spokesman, said that the â??manual recognizes that like many businesses, and certainly all our competitors, we serve multiple clients. In the process of serving multiple clients we receive information from multiple sources.â?
â??This policy and the excerpt cited from the training manual simply reflects the fact that we have a diverse client base and give our sales people and traders appropriate guidance,â? he added.
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION
Fostering a Market Then Abandoning It
Even now, two years after a dispute with Goldman, C. Talbot Heppenstall Jr. gets miffed talking about the firm.
As treasurer at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, a leading nonprofit health care institution, Mr. Heppenstall had once been pleased with Goldmanâ??s work on the enterpriseâ??s behalf.
Beginning in 2002, Goldman had advised officials at U.P.M.C. to raise funds by issuing auction-rate securities. Auction-rate securities are stock or debt instruments with interest rates that reset regularly (usually weekly) in auctions overseen by the brokerage firms that sell them. Municipalities, student loan companies, mutual funds, hospitals and museums all used the securities to raise operating funds.
Goldman had helped to develop the auction-rate market and advised many clients to issue them, getting an annual fee for sponsoring the auctions. Between 2002 and 2008, U.P.M.C. issued $400 million; Goldman underwrote $160 million, while Morgan Stanley and UBS sold the rest.
But in the fall of 2007, as the credit crisis deepened, investors began exiting the $330 billion market, causing interest rates on the securities to drift upward. By mid-January 2008, U.P.M.C. was concerned about the viability of the market and asked Goldman if the hospital should get out. Stay the course, Goldman advised U.P.M.C. in a letter, a copy of which Mr. Heppenstall read to a reporter.
On Feb. 12, less than a month after that letter, Goldman withdrew from the market â?? the first Wall Street firm to do so, according to a Federal Reserve report. Other firms quickly followed suit.
With the market in disarray, the interest rates that U.P.M.C. and other issuers had to pay investors skyrocketed. Rather than pay the rates, U.P.M.C. decided to redeem the securities.
Although Goldman had fled the market, it refused to allow a redemption to proceed, Mr. Heppenstall said, warning that its contract with the hospital barred U.P.M.C. from buying back the securities for at least another month.
U.P.M.C. had to continue paying lofty interest rates â?? as well as Goldmanâ??s fees, even though the firm was no longer sponsoring the auctions, according to Mr. Heppenstall.
Goldman had been U.P.M.C.â??s investment banker for about six years, Mr. Heppenstall noted in an interview, but this incident marked the end of that relationship. He said that the other Wall Street firms that had underwritten U.P.M.C.â??s auction-rate securities, Morgan Stanley and UBS, had allowed it to redeem them. Goldman was the only firm that did not.
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