Goldman Sachs cut out trading completely in the first quarter – at least that’s what the language of its earnings filing indicates. The bank managed to avoid using the t-word at any point in its earnings announcement, although it mentioned clients 29 times and made 46 references to investment.

Goldman Sachs cut out trading completely in the first quarter – at least that’s what the language of its earnings filing indicates.

In the financial world, brand and institutional heritage are powerful. As an aside, I am intrigued to ponder how many blows the Goldman Sachs brand can suffer before it is decisively diminished. This latest episode concerning maverick board member Rajat Gupta is disconcerting. There is a huge difference between sitting in a franchise seat, as most investment bankers do, and creating the franchise. I am always intrigued when I have the chance to meet financiers who have had the guts to found their own firms. It was thus a great pleasure to have lunch with Jonathan Lourie, one of the co-founders of Cheyne Capital, and John Hyman, who recently joined the London-based hedge fund. They are Morgan Stanley alumni. Jonathan, unusually for a banker, is a modern renaissance man. We had so much to talk about that I was sad when lunch was over, which is more than can be said for most business lunches.

Share giveaway might prompt baby boom; Crucial strategic investor role to be decided.

Many investors in structured credit deals are anxiously awaiting the outcome of SEC investigations into a number of CDO transactions, hoping that they will be able to bring lawsuits of their own if the banks are forced to settle. But the statute of limitations means that they might have already left it too late.

Goldman Sachs posted weak fourth-quarter results in January and released a code of revised business principles that threatened to slow its legendary speed in closing deals.

Michael Evans’ promotion emphasizes importance to growth prospects; Internal politics also plays a role

Kevin Connors, Goldman Sachs’ global co-head of global G10 foreign exchange sales, is understood to have left the firm abruptly last week.

A serious second-quarter equity trading stumble by Goldman Sachs led to predictions that its investment banking dominance might be coming to an end as a new regulatory era dawns.

For the moment, Goldman will no longer be the safe choice or even the first choice for clients.

The SEC fraud suit against Goldman Sachs has shone a spotlight on the exploitation of the useful idiots at the heart of the credit crisis. Goldman must now hope for similar suits against rival dealers so that it can try to deploy the Murder on the Orient Express defence – the argument that they all did it. But whether or not Goldman is joined in the dock by some of its peers, the industry now faces the most serious threat yet to its derivatives-based trading revenues and a business model of adopting multiple roles in the modern capital markets.

Oh the irony. As Euromoney left the executive offices of one of Goldman’s main hubs this week, the image projected on the plasma screen in the elevator could not have been starker. “The world against Goldman Sachs” was the screaming headline of one financial television news channel.

Goldman Sachs must launch a reputational and legal defence; The SEC has almost as much at stake as its target

As Blankfein and Tourre prepared to make an unlikely double act on Capitol Hill, the SEC had almost as much at stake as its target

The SEC fraud suit against Goldman Sachs has shone a spotlight on the exploitation of the useful idiots at the heart of the credit crisis.

The case against Goldman is not good news for anyone working in banking.

It could be argued that the Goldman allure is waning and that all those years of invincible isolation have unleashed a backlash of Goldie bashing. However, I discern a more ominous development.

When Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill decided to share his views with the wider world on Manchester United’s recent £500 million bond issue the result was pretty predictable.

Big firms rush to boost headcount; UBS, BofA seen as most aggressive hirers

Latin American private banking: Advisers sceptical of highs

In September, as part of their succession plan for Morgan Stanley, the board of directors announced a decision to split the roles of chairman and chief executive. From January, John Mack who now combines both positions, will continue only as chairman while James Gorman will step up to be chief executive.

Talk to investors in financial stocks for background on profiles of Citi and Goldman Sachs and they assume Euromoney is working up a simple comparison between the biggest loser and the biggest winner in investment banking from the near collapse of the financial system.

Assailed on all sides for preparing to pay huge bonuses from a financial market kept alive by systemic government support, Lloyd Blankfein is having to fight Goldman’s corner almost as fiercely as when the crisis was at its worst. He tells Peter Lee that it is not business as usual.

Lloyd Blankfein must be starting to see that damn squid in his dreams. On the last weekend in October, it appeared in papier-mâchè form, held aloft by protesters dangling its red tentacles outside his central park apartment building in New York. Two days later, there it was again in Chicago, a more rubbery looking version this time, seeming to swallow the head of one poor protester marching towards Goldman’s offices.

Assailed on all sides for preparing to pay huge bonuses from a financial market kept alive by systemic government support, Lloyd Blankfein is having to fight Goldman’s corner almost as fiercely as when the crisis was at its worst. He tells Peter Lee that it is not business as usual.

Blankfein interview: Goldman pays the price of success Goldman stands by its governance

Lloyd Blankfein reveals it's not business as usual at Goldman Sachs. Find out why.

The Sun's Amii, aged 22 from Birmingham, has given her own insight into compensation levels at Goldman Sachs

The yet-to-be-named trade aggregation service launched by CLS and Icap subsidiary Traiana in April received a fillip in September when Goldman Sachs became the latest bank to say it would support it. It joins the seven founder banks: Bank of America; Credit Suisse; Citi; Deutsche Bank; JPMorgan; Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland.