Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 10:51AM

FIRST!!!

Any Brokerage/IB/Financial Svcs Co. that has any intelligence woudl consider going private.

There is absolutely no benefit to remaining a public company in this environment.

Hasn't been for years already!

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 10:52AM

If private == govt. owned, then yes, they are going private.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 10:57AM

Completely out of topic, but Becky Quick is looking particularly hot today, or is it that I have a nasty hangover?

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 10:59AM

@5 ...no, you're just still drunk

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 10:59AM

Remember Warren has warrants of $5Bln to buy GS at $115. I wouldn't about W.B.'s profitability.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:01AM

As a private PE guy, i think that is the smartest move they can make.
Being happy in finance is all about avoiding:

- Government
- M2M (being public)
- Redemptions (being an open end fund)

Without those you'll be living happily and if you fuck up it takes years before your investors.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:04AM

def a 1

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:08AM

Link doesn't work.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:12AM

GS = $40. by January. I told you white boys!

Obama

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:12AM

GM shares halted.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:12AM

if GS takes itself private, they better pay taxpayer some premium on the $10B injection.

Honestly even being a private firm, i don't know how GS will become. Without public sources of funding, GS will be nothing like what it has become known in the past 10-20 years. For one, I doubt they can do much prop trading any more. They probably will become primarily i-banking and asset management firm.

Not certain going private will help them. Either way I think there will be many more job cuts to come at GS and MS

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:13AM

As much as I despise GS, going private would be a great move-bastards!

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:15AM

Not a chance. You guys are silly.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:16AM

Blankie - Obama just called and wants the $10 Billion back. This money belongs to The People.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:23AM

They will be my minions.

-General M. Bison

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:24AM

GM - ouch

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:34AM

@24 begging

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:38AM

Oh Bess, I'd love to take you private...

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:40AM

Uncle Sam will not let GM, Ford, & Chrysler fail. The damage would go far beyond anything Lehman Bros could ever inflict on the US economy.

That is the opinion of TGFD.

The Guy from Delaware

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:43AM

Well TGFD, rumor has it that you have been wrong before...

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:43AM

TGFD, more cash is going to help them? once upon a time corporations use to fail, and the crazy thing about it is that other business came up right behind them. they are bleeding cash, so you want to cover up the wound with more of it?

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:48AM

We are not going Private. I assure you. We have supremely qualified, highly touted, smart people with high GMATs and good ivy-league MBAs like me at the helm.
So what I can't access dealbreaker from 85 Broad. I have my iPhone for that.

So we're not going private. We got some real smart mofos working around me, myself being the smartest one.

So screw your rumors!

_GOLDMAN_BALLER

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:51AM

There is no chance GS goes private - they have more issues than you all know and they NEED the government by their side until the delevering process is over - which by the way is NOT EVEN CLOSE here... Going private puts them in a place they cannot recover from. They need MONEY and going private shuts the FREE money door.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:53AM

@31 That attempt at "sarcasm" was pathetic. EPIC FAIL.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 11:57AM

I am sorry that the investment banks ever went public in the first place (and this includes tearing down the walls between commercial and investment banks). The sole purpose of an investment bank is to make money for investment bankers. To allow them to take nearly all of the upside (they let little trickle through to the shareholder) and have much less equity at risk on the downside has meant that moral hazard was present from the beginning.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:04PM

I was a junior banker with GS LA Team until last week.

Who knows anything about real estate development?

How do you get started in this game if you want to 'wildcat' if you will.

Any suggestions on how to capitalize on the current environment?

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:12PM

Using the term EPIC FAIL represents an EPIC FAIL.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:16PM

No need to go private. Walk out the door and set up shop across the street. Start all over. New name: "Gwhiz".

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:28PM

A GS partner once said to me "no one will ever take Goldman private except Goldman" ... that was with the market cap at about $80-85 BN and PE shops firmly in control ... with the stock price nearly round-tripping to 1999 IPO price ($53) has to be a huge motivating factor for the remaining partners (+ Buffett or whomever else is sitting on $2-10BN) to take it back private .. yes, it will still have the same issues (poor access to leverage/funding, gov't scrutiny, locked up financial markets) but without the glare of public equity holders they can maneuver a lot easier along the fringes.

If this does not come to fruition, I'd have to agree with @38, which is ironically what I was talking about last night with some people. Why WOULDN'T the best prop / PIA guys leave en masse, esp if the rumors are true and they're all getting coal for a bonus this year? they could start GS 2.0 without the shitty balance sheet and start re-building a smaller (yet highly profitable) IB ... harks back to the good bank-bad bank scenario that was floated for LEH, but they ran out of time to get it done ...

oh, and btw, the partnership has supposedly been cut in half, only no one really knows that yet ... it's an open secret that at times the P is taken away from underperforming PMDs but they're allowed to stay working there. This year appears to have been esp brutal. boo hoo

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:32PM

@33- paulson didn't push the ipo through, CORZINE did. paulson and his buddies didn't want the place to go public.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:34PM

@41

Leave for......where?

Start a smaller IB......with what $$$?

I think the days of (number between 1 and 3) - (number between 3 and 5) Ex-Goldman (Bankers / Traders / Dingleberries) starting up new (Hedge Fund / PE Fund / Arby's) are behind us for awhile

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:35PM

and @39, no, Corzine was thrown under the bus to get the IPO done, led by none other than Hank the Tank.

Imagine being a GS partner in 1999 -- you get to realize the value that took 130 years to create ... they left in DROVES soon after, many with $100MM++ who may have only been partners for a short time (2-4 years) ... those that stayed of course saw it grow even higher ...

it will be very interesting to see if they can get it done (and sell it back to the public in 2014)

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:39PM

@43 there are still a lot of people who would give these douches money

they'll convince investors it was a "cyclical" thing that caused all the losses this year, nothing "they" did

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:47PM

"As CEO of Goldman Sachs, Corzine had worked for nearly two years to transform the legendary partnership into a public company. Fighting significant resistance from many of the partners, he maneuvered and battled to sell the idea within Goldman. Eventually, he succeeded in his call for a vote by secret ballot, which had never been done before.

With the IPO approved but still several months away, Corzine and his family went skiing. While he was away, three members of Goldman’s five-member executive committee, led by Corzine’s co–chief executive, Hank Paulson (the man he appointed and who still runs the company), staged a palace coup, stripping him of his CEO title and his power. "

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/12194/

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 12:51PM

Lehman was going private too ooop!

Take a cue as to where GS is going, bank Holding Co or not - This just changes who is charge of the liquidation.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 1:00PM

@45

sad...but prob true

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 1:37PM

GS going private is a STUPID rumor. One cannot take government money and spend it such.

On a second thought, some have done just that.

Maybe, it is better they are split.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 2:00PM

This is complete bullshit. GS is a bank holding company. No one's going private. The people who start these rumors are idiots.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 3:14PM

TGFD @ 28

Don't be a moron. Please explain to me just how a GM fail would be more detrimental to the system than the Lehman fail. Spike up in unemployment, yes. Bankruptcies of some suppliers, probably. Systemic collapse, not likely.

Maybe some intricacies I'm missing, but you're acting like Chicken Little.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 3:42PM

"Using the term EPIC FAIL represents an EPIC FAIL."

I think the rule books states. "If you change the spelling of "Fail" to "Phail" you are allowed one pass."

Rawr.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 4:20PM

@41

I can't fault your logic at all, but to achieve any sort of scale, and to be able to adhere to whatever new regulatory burdens they'll have, getting all the back-office stuff together to create a new firm has never been more difficult, IMHO. And with credit markets in bad shape, the normal means of up-front funding of big expenditures like new infrastructure is shut off - - after all, that's what debt is normally for.

I'm not saying that this stuff is prohibitive, I'm just saying it takes time, and making a fast start would be extremely hard. Again, this assumes these guys would want to operate a new business that has decent scale.

But now that I've said all that, maybe they could accomplish that by some sort of roll-up of small, established firms, taking them private.

Posted by guest , Nov 07, 2008 4:21PM

@53

You are brain dead.

Only choice is to nationalize.

Posted by guest , Nov 10, 2008 2:17PM

@53

GM issued has issued so much commercial paper... I don't know if it would be as detrimental as a Lehman failure but I would imagine it would be just as bad if not worse for money markets, pension funds and the like that hold that paper. Credit markets would refreeze as well and probably take another 3-4 months to thaw out.