Goldman Sachs new ‘transparency’ seen as marketing ploy

Goldman Sachs Group has pledged to be more open about how it makes money and to put the interests of clients ahead of its own in an effort to rebut criticism it acted more like a hedge fund than a bank during the credit boom and misled investors.

Goldman revealed for the first time how much it made from trading and investing on its own behalf, which many investors have suspected is a key source of the bank’s profits, during the first three quarters of the year.

The bank has also made structural changes to its divisions, but there was no major management shake-up, leaving in place chief executive Lloyd Blankfein. Blankfein and his firm came under fire last April after US securities regulators sued Goldman and bond trader Fabrice Tourre for selling repackaged mortgage bonds to investors without disclosing key information about the securities.

Soon after the SEC lawsuit, Goldman commissioned a report to determine how it should change the way it does business. The recently released report recommends creating at least three internal committees and focuses mainly on disclosure and oversight. It makes few recommendations for how Goldman will change the way it does business day to day and some observers questioned how much will change.

Not everyone is enthusiastic. ‘I’m not terribly convinced it produces a new culture. It seems to be part of their concerted public relations effort,’ said Cornelius Hurley, a professor and director of Boston University's Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law.

Still, the Goldman report does shed new light on the heretofore murky realm of proprietary trading profits, revealing that its investment and lending group, which includes the bank's bets with its own money, accounted for nearly 30% of pre-tax earnings in the first three quarters of 2010.

And Goldman's disclosure overhaul could boost pressure on rivals to follow suit, especially after the sweeping Dodd Frank financial reform bill shone a spotlight on the propensity of big Wall Street firms to make risky bets with their own capital.

‘I think other banks will follow Goldman on this. They may not want to admit it, but this kind of disclosure puts pressure on other boards to act,’ said Brad Hintz, investment banking analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein in New York.

The 63 page report prepared by a committee led by executive and former Federal Reserve Bank of New York president Gerald Corrigan and by Michael Evans, a vice chairman of the company, details 39 plans for how it will change after years of investor accusations its financial statements are opaque and client complaints about conflicts of interest.