The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Founded in , Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City , with regional headquarters in many international financial centers. Goldman Sachs offers services in investment banking advisory for mergers and acquisitions and restructuring , securities underwriting , prime brokerage , asset management as well as wealth management and investment management via Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management.
It is a market maker for many types of financial products and provides clearing and custodian bank services. It operates private-equity funds and hedge funds. It structures complex and tailor-made financial products. It trades both on behalf of its clients flow trading and for its own account proprietary trading. The company invests in and arranges financing for startups, and in many cases gets additional business as bookrunner when the companies launch initial public offerings.
Louis in Goldman entered the initial public offering market in when it took Sears, Roebuck and Company public. Woolworth Company in , and Continental Can. In , Henry S.
Bowers became the first non-member of the founding family to become a partner of the company and share in its profits. Ad, a closed-end fund. In , during the Great Depression , the firm ousted Catchings, and Sidney Weinberg assumed the role of senior partner. Weinberg shifted Goldman's focus away from trading and toward investment banking. In the s, Gus Levy joined the firm as a securities trader, where two powers fought for supremacy, one from investment banking and one from securities trading.
Levy was a pioneer in block trading and the firm established this trend under his guidance. Due to Weinberg's heavy influence, the firm formed an investment banking division in in an attempt to shift focus off Weinberg. In , Levy took over Weinberg's role as Senior Partner and built Goldman's trading franchise once again. At the same time, partners reinvested nearly all of their earnings in the firm. The bankruptcy was large, and the resulting lawsuits, notably by the SEC , threatened the partnership capital, survival, and reputation of the firm.
