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Within days -- perhaps even hours -- of news that Goldman Sachs was facing fraud charges from U.S. regulators, rivals seized on a chance to elbow in front of Wall Street's most profitable bank. Investment bankers have been lobbying executives at state-owned Agricultural Bank of China and pushing officials in Beijing to drop Goldman as an underwriter for the more than $20 billion IPO the Chinese bank is preparing, according to sources familiar with the matter. The sources said rival bankers were also asking officials at state-controlled Bank of Communications to ditch Goldman from its joint global coordinator role in...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Representative Barney Frank said on Monday that securities regulators' fraud case against Goldman Sachs increases the chance that financial reform will pass. Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, also said he does not believe all 41 Republicans in the Senate will vote against the financial reform bill. "It reinforces the need for much of what we were doing" on financial reform, Frank said on CNBC Television. On Friday, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman with fraud for its marketing of a subprime mortgage product. Frank also said it is not essential to create...

Goldman retreats from life settlements Fri Dec 18, 2009 2:27pm EST *Goldman decision follows Congressional hearing *Credit crunch crushes exotic securities By Matthew Goldstein NEW YORK, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs (GS.N) is quietly backing away from life settlements--- the business of buying life insurance policies from aging Americans in the hopes of collecting on the death benefit. The Wall Street investment bank is ending its involvement with a "mortality index" it launched in December 2007 with high expectations. A Goldman spokesman confirmed the decision. Goldman's QXX index tracks the life expectancy of a group of people aged 65...

I'm doing 'God's work'. Meet Mr Goldman Sachs The Sunday Times gains unprecedented access to the world's most powerful, and most secretive, investment bank John Arlidge Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. The men and women who arrive in the watery dawn sunshine, dressed in Wall Street black, clutching black briefcases and BlackBerrys, are very, very private. They walk quickly from their black Lincoln town cars to the lobby, past, well, nothing, really....