As a public company, Goldman Sachs will have the financial strength and strategic flexibility to continue to serve our clients effectively as well as to respond thoughtfully to the business and competitive environment over the long term. |
During the third quarter, we saw increasing activity levels across all of our major businesses and believe overall market conditions support a generally optimistic outlook. |
Goldman Sachs has called lower Manhattan its home for 136 years and we are proud to reaffirm our commitment to this neighborhood and to the city of New York. |
I think all of us know that what we went through in the last half of the Nineties is not sustainable. We're going to need to adjust ourselves to a period of more normal growth. How we think about managing our businesses in that environment is the tricky question we're all grappling with. |
I think the danger is to just look through that lens, to lose a sense of perspective and rush toward harsh regulations that are unnecessary. Some regulation will be necessary, some changes in accounting rules. |
Investment banks are increasingly using their own balance sheets to extend credit to clients, to assume market risk on their behalf and sometimes to co-invest alongside them. Investment banking serves as the main initial point of contact with all of Goldman Sachs for our clients. |
Looking ahead, while we remain cautious about the near-term operating environment, we are confident in the strength of our franchise and the firm's longer-term growth prospects, |
The best time for transition is during a period of great strength, ... We believe these appointments and the evolution of the governance of the firm will strengthen our management focus and keep the firm on a solid foundation to serve our clients, develop our people, and execute our strategy. |
This acquisition highlights Goldman Sachs' strategy of expanding our electronic market-making capabilities, |
This action also will meet a fundamental objective of the partners -- to share ownership benefits and responsibilities more broadly among all of the firm's employees. |
Today we affirm our commitment to lower Manhattan and the City of the New York, the financial capital of the world, |
We are taking this step to secure permanent capital to grow; to share ownership broadly among our employees now and through future compensation; and to permit us to use publicly traded securities to finance strategic acquisitions that we may elect to make in the future. |
We are very confident about the long-term outlook for our business, but believe that the immediate impact will be a further weakening in the operating environment and a delay in the economic recovery, ... However, given increased fiscal and monetary stimulus, we anticipate that long-term economic recovery should be more certain and vigorous than previously expected. |
We don't have a lot more time to deal with climate change, ... We need the right balance between regulation and market-based approaches. |
We're all trying to get our heads above the battle smoke and look for the real meaning of Enron to put it in perspective, |