When Goldman Sachs launched Marcus in 2016 and jumped into consumer finance, it generated high hopes and a few questions. Could a storied brand that catered to the elite reach the lowly consumer? Would losses doom the project? Would the bankers strangle the hungry fledgling? Six years later, as it announces Marcus is being scaled […]
History has a way of repeating itself, particularly in finance. In the last financial crisis a dozen years ago, banks received taxpayer-backed bailouts and paid hefty bonuses to their executives. The uproar was loud and lasting. Now Wall Street seems poised for a repeat, after a massive federal coronavirus stimulus and a liquidity jolt from […]
Goldman Sachs has had a string of ugly news headlines lately over its dealings with Libya’s sovereign wealth fund, its role in the collapse of a British retailer and its ties to an investment fund in Malaysia embroiled in a corruption probe. But this post is not about those things.
Goldman Sachs released its quarterly results last week over Twitter, abandoning the news distribution services it had used since becoming a public company in 1999. It’s welcome news for Twitter, which could use the boost, but not for Businesswire and PRNewswire, the two giants in the news services industry. Silence from the SEC suggests more […]
UBS chief executive Sergio Ermotti bravely launched a defense of the banking sector and hit out at its critics in a candid interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In this post, we imagine the conversation Ermotti had with his PR chieftain when he returned from the mountains.
It’s the time of year to reflect on life, business – and our best and worst posts. Your diligent scribe here at the Risk Matters blog had a few observations that proved prescient. Oh yes, there were some clunkers, too.
The Bloomberg terminal-peeping scandal is rich in irony. It has launched a media feeding-frenzy that could run for a while – and prove difficult for the company to manage.
Although it is Wall Street’s biggest deal advisor, Goldman Sachs is not advising on the mammoth $28 billion takeover of Heinz. But the firm is involved in the widening investigation about suspicious options trades that came from a Goldman client account in Zurich just before the deal was announced. Goldman isn’t accused of wrongdoing, but […]
With the awards season in full swing, we are pleased to present the 10 nominees for outstanding post from the Risk Matters blog over the past year. Enjoy!
After its skillful communication the day following an embarrassing trading debacle, Knight Capital Group has gone quiet. That’s odd, because the firm seems to have stabilized itself, with news reports saying it secured fresh financing and dealers resumed routing trade orders to the firm. But without more communication from Knight, speculation about its future is […]