ByLoSellHi
Registered: Jul 2006
Posts: 11231 |
01-13-07 10:47 PM
The poor bastard. He got the shaft on his bonus. 
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2...in-up-at-night/
What Keeps Lloyd Blankfein Up at Night?
January 12, 2007, 12:35 pm
Goldman Sachs C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein
The trouble with being at the top of your game is that there is so much room to fall. That may be why Forbes’s profile of Goldman Sachs, like some other recent media coverage, tends to characterize the giant securities firm as beset by potential peril. Once you are on a pedestal, everyone wonders what will knock you off, and when.
Goldman has set two annual earnings records in a row. The firm leads the pack in mergers and acquisitions. Its wealth managers attracted $94 billion in new money last year. Total revenue grew by 50 percent. Goldman’s stock climbed 55 percent.
But according to Forbes’s article on the firm and its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein — whom writer Neil Weinberg describes as a “nebbishy Master of the Universe” — threats abound. Goldman may have become too dependent on trading, he writes, “a volatile, random, risky business” that could make it “more vulnerable in a worldwide market meltdown.”
Mr. Blankfein himself sounds a bit nervous, especially for a man who just received a $53.4 million bonus. Forbes says that he:
can’t sleep some nights, fretful over what could go wrong “when the unforeseeable happens,” he says. “What keeps me up nights is how changes in sentiment because of unforeseen events could unravel years of wealth creation.” He adds: “How much wealth would leave how quickly? And what would be the knockoff effects? I worry about scenarios like that.”
And Wall Street itself shares those concerns, which may be why Goldman’s price-to-earnings multiple is so low compared to competitors Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, even though its profits per employee are two to three times higher.
The difference, perhaps, is that neither of those firms could be described the way Forbes described Goldman: “a giant hedge fund with some consulting services attached.”
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