Goldman Sachs Sees Similarities to 2001 in Current Downturn
February 08, 2012, 8:23 PM ESTBy Christine Harper
Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. sees similarities to the 2001 downturn in the current market, and expects prospects to rebound as they did a decade ago, Chief Financial Officer David A. Viniar said.
“I don’t want to mislead people into thinking it feels great,” Viniar, 56, said today at a conference in Miami sponsored by Credit Suisse Group AG. The environment “feels a little bit better than a few months ago,” he said.
Goldman Sachs, which was the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history before converting to a bank in 2008, began cutting jobs, pay and other costs last year as revenue slid 26 percent compared with 2010. The firm’s return on equity, a measure of how it invests shareholder money, plunged to 3.7 percent last year from 11.5 percent a year earlier.
To contact the reporter on this story: Christine Harper in New York at charper@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Steve Dickson at sdickson1@bloomberg.net
