Goldman Sachs Sees Europe Opportunity as UBS Retreats, F&W Says
February 06, 2012, 2:15 AM ESTBy Leigh Baldwin
Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sees an opportunity to expand in Europe as UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group AG scale back investment banking operations, Finanz & Wirtschaft reported.
“A still larger market share in Europe is definitely our aim. And that’s in every area, be it trading, share and bond issues, mergers and acquisitions or asset management,” the Swiss newspaper quoted Goldman President Gary Cohn as saying. “We want to be number one in all of our markets,” he was quoted as saying.
Optimism about finding a solution to the European debt crisis has “diminished,” Cohn told the newspaper, saying he “noticed how worried the Europeans are” at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Goldman is cutting costs and has enforced “strict cost discipline,” Cohn is quoted as saying by the newspaper. The company is lowering expenditure by $1.4 billion, independent of personnel costs, Cohn told Finanz & Wirtschaft.
--Editors: Linda Shen, Sara Marley
To contact the reporter on this story: Leigh Baldwin in Zurich at lbaldwin3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mariajose Vera at mvera1@bloomberg.net
