Goldman Sachs | featured news

Goldman said it was restricting participation in its new Facebook investment fund only to foreign clients, after receiving intense public scrutiny over the move.

As Goldman Sachs pours $450 million into Facebook, Japan, with a large and growing online advertising market, is a big hole in Facebook’s global fabric.

New money will give Facebook power to steal away employees, develop products and possibly pursue acquisitions, all without being publicly traded.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc agreed to pay $550 million to settle civil fraud charges over how it marketed a subprime mortgage product, ending months of negotiations that rattled the bank's clients and investors.

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, in written testimony prepared for a Senate hearing on Tuesday, said his firm "certainly did not bet against our clients."

Recently released emails show how Goldman Sachs built its mortgage business by closely working with lenders such as Washington Mutual and Long Beach, two firms that a Senate review said "polluted the financial system" with souring loans.

A Senate investigation into the financial crisis has found that Goldman Sachs, the storied Wall Street investment bank, sought to profit from the historic decline in housing prices by betting against the US mortgage market.

President Obama said on Wednesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission never discussed civil fraud charges against Goldman Sachs with the White House before they were publicly announced.

Goldman Sachs said Tuesday its first-quarter earnings almost doubled to $3.3 billion as its trading business again surpassed the rest of the financial industry. A top lawyer for the bank, which is facing civil fraud charges, said Goldman would "never intentionally mislead anyone."

Representative Barney Frank said on Monday that securities regulators' fraud case against Goldman Sachs increases the chance that financial reform will pass.