Goldman Sachs

Upjohn Co., a widely rumored takeover target, has retained investment banker Goldman, Sachs & Co. as an adviser, Wall Street stock traders said Wednesday, sparking a sharp rise in the drug company's stock. Goldman Sachs, which has a policy of not commenting on client matters, declined to do so when asked about Upjohn. A spokesman for Upjohn Co., headquartered in Kalamazoo, Mich.

NEW YORK Shortly after Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s board learned of famed investor Warren Buffett's $5-billion lifeline at the height of the financial crisis, then-director Rajat Gupta phoned hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. Rajaratnam, a federal prosecutor said Monday, then used that information when he snapped up Goldman stock before the deal was announced in September 2008. Prosecutors said Gupta helped Rajaratnam make $1 million in just six minutes with the help of illegal inside information.

If you give millions of seriously underwater homeowners a new equity position in their properties by reducing their principal mortgage debt, will they keep paying on their loans and avoid foreclosure? Call it a pipe dream or a significant model for other lenders and investors, but one company says it has found an important combination: Modify underwater borrowers' loans so that their payments are reduced to a manageable amount and cut their principal debt over time, but make the deal dependent on their scrupulous on-time monthly payments of the new amount plus sharing of a portion of any future profit they make on the house sale.

Prosecutors probing insider trading in the medical devices industry are investigating a senior Goldman Sachs banker and a former employee of the notorious hedge fund Galleon Group. The investigation, according to a person briefed on the matter, is focused on the 2009 takeover of Advanced Medical Optics in Santa Ana. The U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles has been scrutinizing the ties between Goldman managing partner Matthew Korenberg, who worked on the Advanced Medical Optics deal, and Paul Yook, a former portfolio manager at Galleon, the person said.

Goldman from the beginning Goldman, Sachs & Co. rose from humble roots to become one of the most successful and envied firms on Wall Street. But now it faces questions about whether its success during the financial crisis came at the expense of its clients and the American economy. 1885 -- Goldman, Sachs & Co. general partnership created. 1956 -- Goldman helps run the initial public offering of Ford Motor Co. stock. 1995 -- Robert Rubin, former Goldman co-chairman, named Treasury secretary.

SEC's case against Goldman The Securities and Exchange Commission alleged that Goldman, Sachs & Co., with the help of hedge fund king John Paulson, created risky mortgage-backed securities that the firm then sold to clients. Here is how it worked, according to the SEC's complaint: In April 2007, as the mortgage market was collapsing, Goldman created ABACUS 2007-AC1, a security based on the value of subprime mortgages. One of Goldman's vice presidents, Fabrice Tourre, let Paulson decide which mortgages were bundled into ABACUS.

Add a big name name to the list of those evangelizing for stocks. In a lengthy report Wednesday, Goldman Sachs strongly recommended stocks over bonds in the next few years. The main reason: Valuations have fallen so sharply after years of poor performance that equities could register big gains if the economy keeps recovering. “The prospects for future returns in equities relative to bonds are as good as they have been in a generation,” wrote Peter Oppenheimer, the firm's London-based chief global equity strategist.

Reporting from Washington -- Toyota Motor Corp. and Goldman Sachs were among the biggest gainers in brand image last year after a rough 2010 that saw each of them enmeshed in controversy, according to U.S. corporate brand rankings made by an online market research firm. More than 13 million product recalls in the U.S. related to sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles starting in 2009 pummeled Toyota's image in 2010, said YouGov, a British firm that tracks brand perception daily with a panel of 2.5 million people worldwide.

The U.S. attorney's office in New York is conducting a criminal investigation of Goldman Sachs & Co. over mortgage securities deals the big Wall Street firm arranged, according to the Associated Press, citing an unnamed person knowledgeable of the investigation. The person said the inquiry stems from a criminal referral by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The source spoke Thursday on condition of anonymity because the investigation is in a preliminary phase. News of the action came a day after a group of 62 House lawmakers, including Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.

There comes a point in every man-made disaster when the guilty parties are identified and brought to book. That way the victims can at least snatch from the wreckage some confidence that lessons have been learned and mistakes recognized. If Friday's federal fraud lawsuit against Goldman, Sachs & Co. over its role in the subprime mortgage meltdown signals the start of that process, all we can say is: Finally . Goldman, like other big Wall Street banks, has taken the position that the crisis was something of a natural disaster.

Jon Corzine left Goldman Sachs with a net worth far exceeding even that of Mitt Romney's today. Many accounts of his tenure at Goldman suggest he "failed up" the corporate ladder. Pushed out of Goldman in a power struggle, he nonetheless pocketed somewhere between $350 million and $500 million when the company went public. He used the cash to buy himself a Senate seat, spending $62 million out of his own pocket. After the Senate, he spent nearly $40 million of his own money to win the New Jersey governorship.

Goldman Sachs had a miserable first quarter - but mainly when it comes to public relations. The firm managed to beat analysts' expectations with better-than-anticipated profit, joining a pageant of generally strong earnings reports that buoyed the stock market. The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. earned $2.1 billion, or $3.92 a share, a 23% slump from its $2.7 billion, or $4.38 per share earnings during the same quarter a year earlier, excluding a one-time cost. But the bank's performance was still better than analysts' projections of less than $3.60 a share.

Add a big name name to the list of those evangelizing for stocks. In a lengthy report Wednesday, Goldman Sachs strongly recommended stocks over bonds in the next few years. The main reason: Valuations have fallen so sharply after years of poor performance that equities could register big gains if the economy keeps recovering. “The prospects for future returns in equities relative to bonds are as good as they have been in a generation,” wrote Peter Oppenheimer, the firm's London-based chief global equity strategist.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. has weathered a lot of criticism over the years, but nothing like the broadside that hit it from inside. A departing executive in the firm's London office accused Goldman in a newspaper column Wednesday of losing its moral compass and being overtaken by a greed-infested corporate culture. "I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it," Greg Smith, who quit as head of the firm's U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe, wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times.

Until now, the most scathing words ever written about Goldman Sachs Group Inc. came from Matt Taibbi, the Rolling Stone reporter who famously labeled the Wall Street giant a “vampire squid.” A new piece by Greg Smith avoids such oratorical bombast, but the accusations he levels at Goldman are just as damning. And Smith's screed may have deeper import given where he worked until Wednesday. As a top executive at Goldman Sachs. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, Smith, the head of the firm's U.S. equity derivatives business in Europe and the Middle East, alleges that the firm has lost its moral compass.

On the first day of trading after Facebook filed for its initial public offering, the information revealed by the company is rippling out through Wall Street. While it will be months before Facebook shares are actually traded, the most obvious impact from Facebook's prospectus is being felt in the shares of technology companies, and particularly companies that were listed as partners of Facebook. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index is up more than twice as much as the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard & Poor's 500 index in early trading.

As a main theme of his campaign for governor, Jerry Brown has attacked Wall Street bankers for fueling the nation's economic troubles. But he has avoided mentioning Goldman Sachs, the bank that is a recent focus of scrutiny, even though it is one of the biggest liabilities for Meg Whitman, the leading Republican candidate for governor, who sat on the company's board. Brown, a Democrat and California's attorney general, also has connections to Goldman, which was charged with civil fraud last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Much of Mitt Romney's millions has come from his relationship with the biggest name on Wall Street: Goldman Sachs. In the personal tax returns released by Romney's presidential campaign Monday, Goldman is revealed as one of the central players involved in managing his family's massive wealth. A significant proportion of the Romney family fortune is parked with an elite division of Goldman that is open only to clients with more than $10 million to invest. Another chunk of the fortune is invested in Goldman-run hedge funds, which like all hedge funds are open only to millionaires.

Toyota Motor Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. were among the biggest gainers in brand image last year after a rough 2010 that saw each of them enmeshed in controversy, according to rankings by online market research firm, YouGov. Toyota's image had been pummeled in 2010 from more than 13 million product recalls in the U.S. related to sudden acceleration, said YouGov, a British firm that tracks brand perception daily. A Los Angeles Times series helped draw attention to Toyota's problems, which led to congressional hearings.