NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Lloyd Blankfein must be the luckiest guy on Wall Street.
He leads one of the Street's biggest bailed-out firms, but unlike other companies propped up by taxpayers, Blankfein's Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is far more profitable. And it's poised to become a more influential force with greater market share.
Different from American International Group Inc., Goldman hasn't had to forfeit an ownership stake in its firm, and its shareholders -- many of them management and employees -- have benefited. Goldman shares trade above $100. That's less than half of where Goldman shares traded at their peak, but far better than the $1 and $3 that AIG and Citigroup shares trade for, respectively.
Since the fall of Bear Stearns Cos. a little more than a year ago, Goldman has taken more than $20 billion in taxpayer cash through loans, payments and backstops. Goldman's latest bailout coup was a $12.5 billion paid out of AIG's $180 billion government cash infusion.
Until it was fully extricated, Goldman always characterized its exposure to AIG as "immaterial," and that its $20 billion notional exposure to AIG was hedged. Turns out that it was -- through government bailouts that didn't exist when Goldman entered the contracts.
Even former New York Luv Guv Eliot Spitzer told journalist Fareed Zakaria on Sunday that he thinks something smells.
"The web between AIG and Goldman Sachs is something that should be pursued," Spitzer said. "Why did [those payments] happen, what questions were asked, why did we need to pay 100 cents on the dollar for those transactions if we had to pay anything, what would have happened to the financial system had it not been paid?"
But the AIG-Goldman affair is just the beginning, under the policy enacted by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Goldman's chief executive until 2006. Major competitors have failed or been diminished. Goldman already seems, if not just poised, to be dominating what's left of the investment banking landscape.
We last visited Goldman in the early days of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, in October. Then, it appeared Goldman would come out ahead by virtue of avoiding a major investment by a commercial bank. Merrill Lynch had just been sold to Bank of America Corp.
'Most powerful, successful'
Five months later, Goldman's position in the marketplace looks even stronger -- its future even more brilliant.
"Goldman Sachs has the most powerful investment banking franchise and the most successful trading operation on Wall Street," Brad Hintz of Bernstein Research wrote Friday, adding that he's been told "new leverage limits are not expected to impact Goldman's trading performance."
"New leverage limits are not expected to impact Goldman's trading performance."
? -- Brad Hintz, Bernstein Research
Hintz said Goldman is touting how it plans to avoid tighter leverage limits. For one, its trading desk can take advantage of widening bid- offer spreads. Fewer players in the marketplace mean there's a bigger gap to exploit. Without Lehman and with a diminished Morgan Stanley, Goldman has more ability to corner a market.
Goldman's commodities oil-trading desk has been linked to the failure of Semgroup Holdings, an oil-trading company in Tulsa, Okla., that declared bankruptcy in July 2008. Semgroup investors say Goldman had access to the company's trading books and could have used that information against the company, according to Forbes.
That's just the trading business. Goldman also will have less competition when it comes to underwriting stocks and bonds, advising corporate clients and providing prime brokerage services -- including trading leverage -- to hedge funds. Goldman ranked No. 1 among advisers with $316 million in revenue during the first quarter, according to Dealogic.
Goldman won't rake in the exponentially growing profits that it did during the middle part of the decade -- it reported $9.54 billion and then $11.6 billion in 2006 and 2007, respectively -- but it will improve mightily on the $2.04 billion in returns it earned last year.
Market-risk regulator
As glittering as Goldman's recent history has been and as bright as its future looks, there is a dark cloud on the horizon. Paulson's successor at Treasury, Timothy Geithner, is proposing a market-risk regulator that would put the regulatory squeeze on any institution deemed so big that its failure would take down the system with it.
Geithner wants to encourage break-ups and the creation of smaller institutions, said John Garvey, a risk management and banking consultant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Goldman, which could easily divide itself into a hedge fund, trading business, private equity shop and advisory firm, would be in the crosshairs of such a plan.
Even separated, though, why would Goldman's roll stop? In the last year, Goldman has benefited from Paulson's selective bailouts, a fortuitously timed ban on short selling, a liberal interpretation of bank holding company rules and soon, an easily gamed auction of distressed securities run by the government.
A conspiracy theorist might think this run of fortune has something to do with the former Goldman executives having influential roles in the Treasury Department.
Market-risk regulator? Smaller companies? Goldman will find a way around it. It just seems to have that kind of luck.
David Weidner covers Wall Street for MarketWatch.
GS bought a shitload of the credit default swaps that AIG issued, then went out and helped bring down the major banks through rumors and short selling. So billions of taxpayer dollars are being tranferred right to GS.