Goldman Sachs should consider its own breakup
By Rob Cox - Reuters Breakingviews
Goldman Sachs has often helped chief executives boost their companies’ shares by breaking them into pieces. The U.S. bank run by Lloyd Blankfein is currently advising Kraft Foods on its split and counseling McGraw-Hill on whether it should do the same. So it’s logical that some inside Goldman have run the numbers on their employer. The results are compelling. Should the firm’s stock linger below its book value, or assets less liabilities, of about $130 a share for much longer, a breakup could be hard for the firm’s board to resist.There’s no suggestion for now that Goldman is considering such a radical maneuver. Most of its peers are also trading at a discount to book value, suggesting a sector-wide issue rather than something Goldman can easily tackle individually. And the company has a long-held view that the individual pieces — an industry-leading investment bank, a massive securities trading operation and an asset management arm — function best in combination.
Yet based on current market metrics, Goldman’s parts are potentially worth a lot more than the whole. And many of the justifications that the firm has given in the past for maintaining its structure look out of step with the changing global regulatory framework.
The starkest illustration of this mismatch comes in asset management. The Volcker Rule provision of the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act stipulates that a bank’s own money cannot comprise more than 3 percent of a private equity fund it manages. At present Goldman’s own capital accounts for a third of the $20 billion fund overseen by GS Capital Partners. Once the Volcker Rule becomes effective, the benefit of investing Goldman’s money alongside clients’ cash will be much diminished.
It could, however, be the simple dollars and cents that eventually talk loudest. Valuing each of the firm’s pieces is art as well as science, partly because the company’s published financial statements do not show the profitability of each segment in detail. But the available information does support a rough sum-of-the parts analysis.
Read the rest of the article here
9 COMMENTS:
Isn't this the company that owns the network we get all the feel good news about everything that's bad with the economy??
"We are not receiving special treatment"
GE responds to charges of crony capitalism
General Electric, with a larger lobbying budget than any other
company in America, has long lobbied for and profited from Big
Government. Since Obama tapped GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt as Job Czar, this
critique has spread throughout the Right.
When it came out that GE's U.S. corporate income tax bill for 2010
was $0, anti-GE sentiment grew on the Left and Right. Finally, at the
latest Republcian debate Newt Gingrich attacked GE for profiting from
Obama-style green-energy loopholes.
So today, GE responds:
"There has been a lot of talk lately about GE and what some call crony
capitalism. Unfortunately, those same people don’t want the facts to get
in the way of their political rhetoric."
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/ge-responds-charges-crony-capitalism
So the TARP worked? I guess for goldman it did...
Dumpster Diving?
Courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse
[Dumpster Diving] Have you ever thought about getting your food out of a trash can? Don't laugh. Dumpster diving has become a hot new trend in America. In fact, dumpster divers even have a trendy new name. They call themselves "freegans", and as the economy crumbles their numbers are multiplying. Many freegans consider dumpster diving to be a great way to save money on groceries. Others do it because they want to live more simply. Freegans that are concerned about the environment view dumpster diving as a great way to "recycle" and other politically-minded freegans consider dumpster diving to be a form of political protest. But whatever you want to call it, the reality is that thousands upon thousands of Americans will break out their boots, rubber gloves and flashlights and will be jumping into dumpsters looking for food once again tonight.
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/dumpster-diving?
Whether someones lying or not ...doesn't give you a good feeling with respect to who's in control?????
Latest Lame Obama Excuse: “Geithner Blew Me Off”
Look at the spin: we are supposed to believe Obama wanted to be
tougher with the banks and was thwarted by his Geithner. Does that
mean we are also supposed to believe that Eric Holder also ignored
Obama’s orders to prosecute?
The only problem with this effort at revisionist history is that it is
completely out of synch with other actions the Administration took in
February and March 2009 that had to have been approved by Obama. And
his posture before this supposed Citigroup “decision” and after, has
been consistently bank friendly. Obama knew from the example of the
Roosevelt administration, which he claimed to have studied in
preparing his inaugural address, that the time to undertake any
aggressive action was at the very start of his term, in that critical
speech. March was far too late to start studying the question of
whether to nationalize Citigroup.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/latest-obama-lame-excuse-my-staff-was-insubordinate.html
Dubbed “#OccupyWallStreet,” the goal of the protest scheduled to start today is to get President Barack Obama to establish a commission to end “the influence money has over our representatives in Washington,” according to the website of Adbusters, a group promoting the demonstration. Organizers want participants to “occupy” the area for “a few months,” according to the website.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-16/wall-street-protesters-vow-to-occupy-lower-manhattan-for-months.html
#13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used
their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways;
the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the
economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government
favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast
wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national
resources. With the national security apparatus under control and
the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not
well understood by the general population.
Fourteen Defining Characteristics Of Fascism
FINRA Drowning In Complaints About Market Manipulation
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/finra-drowning-complaints-about-market-manipulation?
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Tax derivatives...
Nurses Hold Actions Across Country Demanding Wall Street Transaction Tax
I find it intriguing that the fact that nurses have stages
protests against Wall Street has gotten pretty much no coverage in the
mainstream media. I checked nurses + protest on Google News, and the
only note take of their September 1 protest was a story in the Boston Herald and MarketWatch (but the latter merely published their press releases).
Nurses have the potential to become an effective and visible source
of pressure, since they are disciplined, organized, and have a good
public image and are a large group. But they need more turnout and more
media interest in order to reverse the perception that nothing can be
done about the banksters.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/09/nurses-hold-actions-across-country-demanding-wall-street-transaction-tax.html
In the second half of the show Max talks to Aaron Krowne of
ML-Implode.com about mortgage lending fraud and government complicity.
@12 minutes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIBFvikcl7g&feature=player_embedded
On the Edge with Danny Schechter
http://maxkeiser.com/2011/09/17/on-the-edge-with-danny-schechter/?
Poverty In America: A Special Report
Conclusion
America is fundamentally changing. We were a nation that had the largest middle class in the history of the globe, but now we are becoming a nation that is deeply divided between the haves and the have nots.
Perhaps you are still doing fine. But don't think that economic disaster cannot strike you. Every single day, thousands more Americans will lose their jobs or will discover a major health problem. Every single day, thousands more Americans will lose their homes or will be forced to take a pay cut.
If you still have a warm, comfortable home to sleep in, you should be thankful. Poverty is a very sneaky enemy and it can strike at any time. If you are not careful, you might be the next American to end up sleeping in your car or living in a tent city.
It is easy to disregard a couple of statistics, but can you really ignore the vast amount of evidence presented above?
It is undeniable that America is getting poorer.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/poverty-in-america-a-special-report
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