The world’s best short-term debt house

The world’s best M&A house

The world’s best equity house

Just what is Goldman Sachs doing buying Spear Leeds Kellogg for $6.5 billion? Is this not the same Goldman Sachs which just six months ago, together with Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, was sending executives down to Washington to lobby regulators at the SEC and politicians in Congress, to take steps which might do away with such businesses? And didn't Merrill buy a similar operation in June, Herzog Heine Geduld? The object of the big firms' desire was a central limit order book (CLOB) for US equities trading. Without it, ran their argument, equities trading would continue to fragment between electronic order matching via ECNs, and electronic quote-driven market making systems. Fragmentation, they continued, would run counter to a broker's duty to execute at the best price, so a far better platform for clients would be the CLOB.

Goldman Sachs

Malcolm Turnbull - lawyer, writer and, more recently, investment banker - seems to have the knack of profiting from difficult times. In 1987 he co-founded an investment bank four months before the world financial markets collapsed. The crash had caused much of corporate Australia to become disillusioned with their existing financial advisers, leaving the door open for Turnbull. "A new bank like ours, which had given no bad advice (only because no one had asked for it) was able to offer a fresh prospective. We got off to a good start."

Hank Paulson, appointed co-chairman and co-chief executive (to serve alongside Jon Corzine) of Goldman Sachs in June, is known for being intensely hard-working - although he says he has never prided himself on trying to work more hours a day than anyone else. A committed and active conservationist (along with his wife), he also likes to spend his holidays in the wild outdoors.

Scavengers and scratchers of value

Different ways to skin a cat

Was Goldman sleeping, did its client just not listen, or was Energy Group simply too clever? After a year of dithering, PacifiCorp let its UK target slip into Texan hands. The only thing that didn't fall through the cracks was the fees for Goldman and the other investment banks. Antony Currie reports.

Orphaning BZW

If an international bank wants to increase its profile in Russia, it heads straight for Gazprom. Russia's largest company has huge capital requirements for the next few years, and to be seen working on as many of its deals as possible is the best way to market services to other Russian companies.

When Armstrong World Industries, a $2 billion US company, announced in early June that it was launching a $354 million hostile takeover of Domco, a Canadian floor-products maker controlled by Sommer Allibert of Paris, investment bankers were surprised to learn that the company's long-time investment banker, Goldman Sachs, was not advising Armstrong.

Awards for Excellence 1997

Goldman Sachs promotes itself as the company's friend, saying it prefers to advise clients on friendly acquisitions. So why has it pitched into three hostile takeovers this year? Not just because times and markets have changed. Michelle Celarier reports.

Deal: Block trade in BP stock

Goldman Sachs has risen to pre-eminence as a global securities house. It is a convincing first in Euromoney's ranking this month of the world's best investment banks. But the US firm has two faces. For its clients it is the vigilant, attentive, even enthralling provider of first-class services. For its rivals it is a mean and aggressive raptor of deals. Which picture is right?

"The grand old man of Wall Street" is a title John Weinberg, chairman of Goldman Sachs, wears uneasily.

It's the envy of Wall Street, the most profitable and most admired investment bank there is. Yet Goldman Sachs remains a partnership in the corporate 1980s and, in a business famous for in-fighting and rule by the strongest, flourishes under the stable rule of two chairmen