Bear blows. Goldman gleams. The contrast is stark.
Goldman Sachs posted a 79 per cent rise in third quarter net income despite the summer market turmoil, as fixed income, currency and commodities generated record quarterly net revenues for the bank. Within that both the commodities and credit products businesses were up on 2006, Goldman said.
One eye-catching headline number: earnings per share jumped from to $6.13 in the three months to end-August, from $3.26 a year earlier. That was after $1.71bn lost due to leveraged loans the bank has been left holding, but even here any buyout bugs were swatted by hedging and by a gain of $900m related to the sale of Horizon Wind Energy.
Goldman was later into the MBS party than some of its peers, which now looks serendipitous – and its prop desk was the right side of mortgages in July and August.
Counterintuitively, the leader of the Wall Street pack may now pile in to take advantage of the fallout in the ABS market – the bank earlier this month poached a London team from Deutsche Bank, led by Jeff Stoltz, the head of European ABS origination, who will now be MD of European securitisation at Goldman.
The numbers are in any case a nice pressie for chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, who Dealbreaker notes will be blowing out the candles on his birthday cake later today.