How Goldman’s Commodities Profit Engine Started to Sputter
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Bank said to be reviewing the unit after weak first quarter
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Blankfein had stayed committed as other firms cut back
The commodities supercycle was over, investors were losing interest and regulators were clamping down on risky trading. Most banks were retreating from commodities, but not Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
“That is a core, strategic business for us,” Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein said in a 2013 interview with CNBC.
Four years on, and Blankfein’s insistence that the commodities division — where he cut his teeth — would eventually return to previous levels of profitability is beginning to waver. Isabelle Ealet, a co-head of the bank’s securities division, is leading a review of Goldman’s commodity division after its worst start to the year in more than a decade, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg…
How Goldman’s Commodities Profit Engine Started to Sputter
