Goldman Sachs

American consumers pressed by slack salaries and growing prices have now less belief in that they would bring more money home and they think that such chances are now at their lowest in 25 years, says the analysis of survey data by Goldman Sachs.

Jan Hatzius, Goldman’s economic, analyzed the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters poll, which asks consumers whether they believe their family income will rise more than inflation in the next 12 months.

The business of a social networking giant Facebook is growing much faster than expected several months ago and according to the Wall Street Journal report the company is about to reach $2 billion in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization in 2011.

Analysts expected slower growth for Facebook when Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies invested in the social networking company. Goldman's and Digital Sky Technologies' investment was at a share price that implied a $50 billion valuation for Facebook.

A number of banks such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Co plan to follow Citigroup and Bank of America in allowing shareholders to vote on executive compensation, reports the Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources with the knowledge of the case.

Under the statutes of the last year’s Dodd-Frank financial reform there should be a say-on-pay vote at least three years at most big U.S. companies.

According to a regulatory filing CEO of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon has received restricted stock and options that could be worth $17 million at current valuations.  

Goldman Sachs is planning to launch a new hedge fund in Hong Kong. The company trading desk head Morgan Sze is setting up a 20-30 member team to start the business that is expected to raise more than $1 billion according to people familiar with the case.

The start-up hedge fund is expected to be one of the largest in Asia with the offices planned to take space in Hong Kong's ICBC Tower. The fund will start operating in the first quarter of 2011, two people familiar with the matter said.

Goldman Sachs has launched a lawsuit against the French investment bank Natixis in London's High Court over three credit derivative transactions.

The filing relates to the situation about whether French investment bank Natixis can cancel a deal on three credit default swaps with Goldman, which is claiming damages for breach of contract.

The law firm for the French bank Stephenson Harwood said Natixis would defend itself vigorously.

"We are preparing our defense. We are surprised that Goldman is suing us," a spokesman for Stephenson Harwood said.

As it became known on Friday, Goldman Sachs intends to adopt Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB), Slovenia's largest bank, 48% of which hold by government and its affiliated. 

Government would also approve a possible takeover of NLB by Belgian banking and insurance group KBC, according to the official resources.

As showed the latest survey from Goldman Sachs 10 out of the 91 banks subjected to Europe's stress tests are anticipated to fail. 

It became known that David Cameron, the PM of the UK, who took office 10 weeks ago, has set up an appointment with the giants of the NY financial sector to discuss the situation and persuade them to continue investing in the UK economy. Among the representatives of the US financial sector are such persons as JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon, Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein, Citigroup's Vikram Pandit, Citadel's Kenneth Griffin, Morgan Stanley's James Gorman, BlackRock's Larry Fink and BNY Mellon's Bob Kelly.

 Yesterday Barbara Jones, U.S. District Judge in Manhattan has finally closed the case against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. initiated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, started in April. According to the court decision the giant is to be paid $550 million to settle civil fraud charges for misleding buyers of mortgage-related investments. The penalty amount includes a $535 million fine and $15 million in restitution of fees it collected. 

An executive of Goldman Sachs, Fabrice Tourre who was recently charged with misleading investors about risky assets ahead of the US housing market meltdown has said that nobody charged him with fraud, reports AFP. According to Fabrice Tourre he reasonably relied on Goldman Sachs’ institutional process to ensure adequate legal review and disclosure of material information, and cannot be held liable for any alleged failings of that process.

Royal Bank of Scotland prosecutes Goldman Sachs for hundreds of millions of dollars to add to $100 million it received as part of a settlement over the marketing of a subprime mortgage product.

As it’s known, resolving a high-profile government case related to the mortgage meltdown, Goldman Sachs has admitted to pay a record $550 million to settle civil fraud charges that it misled buyers of complex investments.

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, who probes the financial crisis, subpoenaed Goldman Sachs Group over its failure to hand in the relevant documents to the panel. Instead of providing the necessary files and grant interviews in connection with the panel's probe Goldman flooded the panel with 2.5 billion pages of records.

Responding to the panel’s request for the documents the company produced 5 terabytes of records, with each terabyte containing 500 million pages of digitized records, FCIC Chairman Phil Angelides told reporters on a conference call.

Ipreo Holdings, which operates the bigdough institutional investor database, is suing Goldman Sachs accusing the company of infringing the copyright and stealing the company data. The suit submitted with the US District Court in New York with the accusations that at least two unidentified Goldman employees of 264 incidents of unauthorised access to the computer database in 2008 and 2009.

The filing alleges that that the Goldman staffers used Ipreo passwords without authorisation to steal confidential data from the site, which claims some 16,000 subscribers.

According to some data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, major US banks temporarily reduced their debt levels just before reporting in the past five quarters. That’s why these banks’ balance sheets appeared to be less risky.

The banks, that have become more vulnerable and more sensitive about showing high levels of debt and risk due to the credit crisis, worried their stocks and credit ratings could be punished.