Goldmine Sacks or Goldmine Sachs (Goldman Sachs nickname)
Goldman Sachs is a leading financial firm, headquartered in lower Manhattan. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the company made so much money (and made its employees so wealthy) that it was nicknamed “Goldmine Sachs” or “Goldmine Sacks.”
Other Goldman Sachs nicknames include “Goldman Sucks/Goldman Sux” (first cited in 1996), “Golden Sacks” (first cited in 1998), “Golden Slacks” (first cited in 2006), “Goldie Mac” (first cited in 2009), “Government Sucks” (first cited in 2009), “Vampire Squid” (coined in 2009) and “Godman Shafts/Goldman Shafts” (first cited in 2010).
In the financial crisis of 2008, Goldman Sachs (“Goldmine Sachs” no longer) made an agreement with the federal government to become a bank and to suspend trading in risky financial securities.
Many Goldman Sachs “alumni”—such as former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr.—became government employees, leading to the nicknames “Government Sachs” and “The United States of Goldman Sachs.”
Wikipedia: Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., or simply Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), is a large global bank holding company that engages in investment banking, securities and investment management. Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869, and is headquartered in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City at 85 Broad Street. Goldman Sachs has offices in all major world financial centers. The firm acts as a financial advisor and money manager for corporations, governments, and wealthy families around the world. Goldman offers its clients mergers & acquisitions advice, underwriting services, asset management, and engages in proprietary trading, and private equity deals. It is a primary dealer in the U.S. Treasury securities market.
History
Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869 by German Jewish immigrant Marcus Goldman. The company made a name for itself pioneering the use of commercial paper for entrepreneurs and was invited to join the New York Stock Exchange in 1896. It was during this time that Goldman’s son-in-law Samuel Sachs joined the firm which prompted the name change to Goldman Sachs.
In the early 20th century, Goldman was a major player in establishing the initial public offering market. It managed one of the largest IPOs to date, that of Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1906. It also became one of the first companies to heavily recruit those with MBA degrees from leading business schools, a practice that still continues today.
In 1929, it launched the Goldman Sachs Trading Corp., a closed-end fund with characteristics similar to that of a Ponzi scheme. The fund failed as a result of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, hurting the firm’s reputation for several years afterward.
In 1930, Sidney Weinberg assumed the role of senior partner and shifted Goldman’s focus away from trading and towards investment banking. It was Weinberg’s actions that helped to restore some of Goldman’s tarnished reputation. On the back of Weinberg, Goldman was lead advisor on the Ford Motor Company’s IPO in 1956, which at the time was a major coup on Wall Street. Under Weinberg’s reign the firm also started an investment research division and a municipal bond department. It also was at this time that the firm became an early innovator in risk arbitrage.
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Its sizable profits made during the 2007 Subprime mortgage financial crisis led the New York Times to proclaim that Goldman Sachs is without peer in the world of finance. The firm’s viability was later called into question as the crisis intensified in September 2008.
In May 2006, Henry Paulson left the firm to serve as U.S. Treasury Secretary, and Lloyd Blankfein was promoted to Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Former Goldman employees head the New York Stock Exchange, the World Bank, the U.S. Treasury Department, the White House staff, and firms such as Citigroup and Merrill Lynch.
On September 21st, 2008, Goldman Sachs received Federal Reserve approval to transition from an investment bank to a bank holding company.
On 22nd September 2008, The last two major investment banks in the United States, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, will become traditional bank holding companies, bringing an end to the era of investment banking on Wall Street. The Federal Reserve’s approval of their bid to become banks ends the ascendancy of the securities firms, 75 years after Congress separated them from deposit-taking lenders, and caps weeks of chaos that sent Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. into bankruptcy and led to the rushed sale of Merrill Lynch & Co. to Bank of America Corp.
Google Books
Production of Culture/cultures of Production
By Paul Du Gay, Open University
Published by SAGE
1997
Pg. 54:
Of course the “bleeding heart” liberals of The Guardian haemorrhage at such gross unfairness and make snide comments about “Goldmine Sachs”.
Google Books
The Velocity of Money:
A Novel of Wall Street
By Stephen Rhodes
New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers
1999
Pg. 48:
He set his cigar down and fixed his eyes on Rick’s face like twin laser beams. “When this firm wooed me away from Goldmine, Sachs five years ago, I was given $1.3 billion worth of…”
3 March 1999, Daily Mail (London), “‘Goldmine’ Sachs Set for Second Try at a Flotation”:
Last June the bank, sometimes dubbed “Goldmine Sacks”, was expected to be worth UKpound 21 billion, but after the turmoil on global markets,
Google Books
The New Barbarian Manifesto:
How to Survive the Information Age
By Ian O. Angell
Published by Kogan Page Publishers
2000
Pg. 199:
The liberals of the Guardian whinge at the gross unfairness of it all, and make snide comments about ‘Goldmine Sachs’.
The Independent (London)
$521,000: The average pay of Goldman Sachs employees and that includes secretaries
By Stephen Foley in New York
Sunday, 12 February 2006
They call it Goldmine Sachs. And well they might. Because the Wall Street giant has become the first major investment bank to see its average salary top half a million dollars.
The extraordinary figure is disclosed in the company’s latest regulatory filings and comes as a record bonus season draws to a close on both sides of the Atlantic.
The Economic Times
City fat cats face middle class backlash
18 Dec 2006, 1230 hrs IST, TNN
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Goldman Sachs – variously nicknamed Goldmine Sacks and Golden Sacks – by various newspapers, which has had a record year in earnings, announced last week it was lavishing bankers, traders and stockbrokers with more than $16.5 billion (£8.5 billion) in bonus loot – the highest ever to be doled out.
calamitygeorge’s weblog
Goldmine Sachs
September 22, 2008
According to the British newspaper Independent, the average pay for all Goldman Sachs employees last year was $521,000. That’s for everyone, including secretaries.
Oh, and (bankrupt) Lehman Brothers’ New York staff will get a $2.5 billion bonus from their new masters, Barclays.
Thanks to British journalists for these facts. The American press just isn’t up to it anymore.
Southern Liberal Living
Goldmine Sachs under Paulson’s leadership
There is a reason I am not comfortable giving a trillion dollar check to this man with no strings attached:
From the Independent:
In 2005, the average Goldman Sachs employee earned $521,000. and that included secretaries:
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September 24th, 2008 in Uncategorized
New York (NY) Times
Wall Street, R.I.P.:
The End of an Era, Even at Goldman
By JULIE CRESWELL and BEN WHITE
Published: September 27, 2008
WALL STREET. Two simple words that — like Hollywood and Washington — conjure a world.
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The beginning of the end is felt even in the halls of the white-shoe firm Goldman Sachs, which, among its Wall Street peers, epitomized and defined a high-risk, high-return culture.
Goldman is the firm that other Wall Street firms love to hate. It houses some of the world’s biggest private equity and hedge funds. Its investment bankers are the smartest. Its traders, the best. They make the most money on Wall Street, earning the firm the nickname Goldmine Sachs. (Its 30,522 employees earned an average of $600,000 last year — an average that considers secretaries as well as traders.)