It is turning out to be an equities year for the big investment banks, as fixed income revenues fall or stall and fees from dealmaking recover slowly.

In tough markets, changes in banks’ market share can be particularly telling. Mergers and acquisitions had another down year in 2023, with total volume falling to $3.13 trillion, from $4.3 trillion in 2022, when rates first started rising, and $5.7 trillion in the post-Covid boom of 2021.

Goldman is transforming its provision of research and insights to make it much easier for investors to form trade ideas.

In 2023, HSBC further solidified its position as Hong Kong’s best bank. Under the leadership of Luanne Lim, HSBC Hong Kong’s chief executive, the bank’s profit before tax soared to $10.7 billion, representing 80% year-on-year growth and contributing 35.3% to the group’s overall pre-tax profit.

Goldman Sachs has been the preeminent mergers and acquisitions advisory firm for almost as long as the business has existed in its modern form. Its performance in the difficult environment of 2023 showed how resilient its franchise is, and it once again wins the award for North America’s best bank for advisory.

Derivatives structurers are thriving, but regulators aren’t convinced the biggest Wall Street banks have a firm grasp of their complex exposure.

Junior bankers should relax about the threat to their jobs from AI and lean into opportunities to bluff their way to Wall Street glory.

A move back up in rates is creating a PR battle among Wall Street banks. JPMorgan was punished for a cautious outlook, Goldman Sachs promoted strong fixed income trading results and Bank of America projected a Zen approach to rate moves.

At a time when geopolitical and macroeconomic turmoil are more bewildering than ever, the need for the guiding hand of a thoughtful investment research and strategy operation is greater than ever for private-banking clients.

Key to succession planning is having a team with that critical combination of technical expertise in the relevant fields of estate and trust planning, but also a history of advising the wealthiest families in approaches that can then be successfully deployed and tailored in the service of new clients who might have similar characteristics.

At the heart of Goldman Sachs’s approach to discretionary portfolio management is the belief that all the bank’s institutional clients ought to have access to the kind of expertise and strategies that historically might only have been accessible to the very biggest.

Goldman Sachs has a 22-year track record of outperformance in creating, analysing and constantly reassessing wealth management portfolios. Key to this is its internal Investment Strategy Group’s (ISG) proprietary strategic asset-allocation data crunching, and the way its wealth advisers engage with the ISG team to provide tailored investment recommendations to ultra-high net-worth individuals, family offices and institutional investors.

Goldman Sachs has been helping clients manage the tricky process of safely and seamlessly moving money from one generation to the next for, well, generations.

Caution at local commercial banks – coupled with the eagerness of large investment banks to foster relationships with private equity players – means large real-estate deals fuelled by back leverage could be primed for a comeback in Europe.

The annual Senate quizzing of US big bank chief executives threw up all the usual favourite partisan arguments, but little else. If this is oversight, it often lacks insight.

The CEO of Goldman Sachs has (mostly) hung up his cans. His colleagues hope that other noise will now die down too – and they think there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic.

Should we take Vivek Ramaswamy literally or seriously?

The manner of the campaign against chief executive David Solomon risks causing the lasting damage that his internal opponents presumably wish to avoid.

Goldman Sachs is losing a key executive in the very business it is relying on to turn the firm's fortunes around.

It was ultra-competitive at the top of the M&A league tables in the review period. Goldman Sachs wins the award for Asia’s best bank for advisory this year because it was there on most of the big mergers and acquisitions. The bank advised on 76 deals in Asia Pacific in the 12 months to the end of March 2023, worth a total of $181.9 billion, according to Dealogic, for a 16.87% share of the market.

The volume of completed M&A deals involving a North American buyer or target was steeply down in the awards period this year, with a 41% drop to just under $2 trillion. But in volatile times activity concentrates on the very best franchises, and this year demonstrated that well. For increasing its market share and strengthening its already dominant position, Goldman Sachs is North America’s best bank for advisory.

The tokenization of real-world assets is spreading fast, requiring the leaders of traditional finance to respond.

The past year posed extraordinary financing challenges for the world’s corporates. However, the political and economic conditions they faced also created an opportunity for creative banks to thrive.

The two chief executives should be on the undercard for the Musk/Zuckerberg cage fight.

Veteran banker Tom Montag is to join the board of Goldman Sachs in a bid to bolster support for embattled chief executive David Solomon. Weak second quarter earnings could make this task harder.

Social bonds need to prove they have impact.

Interest rate risk management has been complicated by the fall in yields after the US bailout of SVB’s depositors. Clients may feel that hedging chiefly benefits Wall Street dealers rather than themselves.

The notion that different businesses can produce healthy results by being under the same roof underpins Goldman Sachs’ diversification strategy. After failing to make that work at the first time of asking, its second attempt looks more derivative – but is perhaps likelier to succeed.

Some of Goldman’s top brass had an easier time of it than others at its latest investor day.

Goldman Sachs likes to mix it up when it comes to choosing peer banks for market share comparisons.