经济学人 | The humbling of Goldman Sachs 高盛的

The struggle to reinvent a firm trapped by its own mythology

努力重塑一家受困于自己的神话的公司

Jan 26th 2023

Goldman sachs has always seen itself as exceptional. When the bank floated its shares in New York in 1999 it declared: “We have an uncompromising determination to achieve excellence in everything we undertake.” Conspiracy theorists have long paid it the backhanded compliment of imagining that it secretly runs the world. Yet lately the only exceptional thing about the Wall Street icon has been its mistakes.

高盛(Goldman sachs)一直认为自己与众不同。1999年在纽约上市时，它宣布:“ 我们有坚定的决心，要在我们所从事的一切事情上做到卓越。”长期以来，阴谋论者一直在讽刺它，认为它在秘密地掌握着世界。然而，最近这位华尔街偶像唯一与众不同的地方就是它的错误。

Since October Goldman has made a u-turn on its plan to build a big consumer bank; booked one of its worst quarterly results for a decade, measured by return on equity; and attracted a probe by the Federal Reserve. The firm is not yet in serious trouble, but it is trapped by its own mythology. Its recent struggles show how hard it will be to reform—and illuminate a new balance of power in global finance.

自去年10月以来，高盛对其“建立大型消费者银行”的计划做出了180度大转弯的调整; 并发布了10年来最糟糕的季度业绩(以股本回报率衡量)之一; 而且还引起了美联储的调查。这家公司还没有陷入严重的困境，但它被自己的神话所困。它最近的挣扎表明了改革的难度，并阐明了全球金融领域的新力量平衡。

To understand Goldman today, take a walk down Wall Street. After the financial crisis of 2007-09, two big American banks reinvented themselves. JPMorgan Chase successfully pursued vast scale across a wide range of business lines. Morgan Stanley built a thriving arm managing the assets of the wealthy, which mints reliable profits. Goldman, however, stuck to its game of trading, advising on deals and bespoke investing. Penal new capital rules made this less lucrative, but the firm staked a Darwinian bet that the resulting shakeout would kill off many competitors. Instead, it badly underperformed the stockmarket for years and got ensnared in the 1mdb scandal, in which officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi received $1.6bn of bribes in 2009-14. A Goldman subsidiary pleaded guilty to a criminal charge and the firm admitted “institutional failure”.

要理解今天的高盛，就去华尔街走一走。2007年至2009年的金融危机过后，美国两大银行进行了自我改造。摩根大通成功地在广泛的业务范围内实现了大规模扩张。摩根士丹利建立了一个蓬勃发展的部门，管理富人的资产，创造可靠的利润。然而，高盛坚持自己的交易游戏，为交易提供咨询以及定制投资。繁重的新资本规则使得这种做法不那么有利可图，但该公司押注达尔文式的赌注，认为由此产生的重组将杀死许多竞争对手。相反，该公司多年来的表现严重落后于股市，还被卷入了1MDB（一个马来西亚发展公司）的丑闻，即2009年至2014年，马来西亚和阿布扎比的官员收受了16亿美元贿赂。高盛的一家子公司承认了一项刑事指控，而且该公司承认存在“制度失败”。

The firm’s boss, David Solomon, took over in 2018. A man with a short fuse, he has tried to rebrand himself and to renew the firm by expanding its core and diversifying into new areas. Goldman now offers transaction banking to multinationals, helping them move funds globally. It has bulked up its asset- and wealth-management arm. And from their Manhattan skyscraper, flush Goldmanites dreamed of growing a mass-market digital bank for ordinary consumers, including a credit-card operation.

该公司的老板大卫 · 所罗门于2018年上任。作为一个脾气暴躁的人，他试图重塑自己的形象，并通过扩大核心业务以及在新领域实现多样化来重振公司。高盛现在为跨国公司提供交易银行业务，帮助它们在全球范围内转移资金。它已经扩大了其资产和财富管理部门。在他们位于曼哈顿的摩天大楼里，富裕的高盛人梦想着为普通消费者发展一个大众市场的数字银行，包括信用卡业务。

Parts of Mr Solomon’s strategy have paid off. Goldman’s market share in mergers and bond trading has risen, helping it make a monster $21bn in profits in 2021 as markets boomed. From taxpayers’ viewpoint, it is safer, with more capital and deposits. And, importantly, its share price has recovered lost ground, rising more than the market and those of most of its peers.

所罗门先生的部分策略得到了回报。高盛在并购和债券交易领域的市场份额有所上升，在市场繁荣的2021年，帮助该公司实现了惊人的210亿美元利润。从纳税人的角度来看，它更安全，有更多的资本和存款。而且，重要的是，该公司股价已经收复“失地”，其上涨幅度超过了市场和大多数同行。

Yet look more closely and the project to remake the bank is vexingly incomplete. Diversification has been patchy: transaction-banking revenues are tiny and the asset-management arm is often dragged down by opaque proprietary bets. The dream of creating a consumer bank has soured. Goldman has 15m customers, but has also faced large losses and bad-debt charges, which is why it is now winding down part of the operation.

然而，如果仔细观察，就会发现，“重塑”银行的计划并不完整，这令人恼火。多样化也参差不齐: 交易银行收入很少，资产管理部门经常被不透明的自营押注拖垮。打造消费者银行的梦想已经破灭。高盛拥有1500万客户，但也面临着巨额亏损和坏账指控，这就是为什么它现在正在逐步缩减部分业务。

As the prospects for a big new earnings machine have receded, everything still rests on the traditional business. The profitability of the trading arm has improved but remains volatile and, on average, pedestrian. Overall, Goldman has made reasonable use of its resources, generating a return on tangible equity of 14% over Mr Solomon’s tenure. But its performance is erratic, veering from 33% in early 2021 to just 5% in the latest quarter. It has lagged behind its American peers half of the time, and the two industry leaders, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley, two-thirds of the time. Investors think that Goldman is worth only the net book—or liquidation—value of its assets, suggesting they doubt that it can generate consistently high returns or find lucrative new areas.

随着大型新盈利机器的前景变得黯淡，一切仍取决于传统业务。交易部门的盈利能力有所改善，但波动性仍然很大，平均而言，表现也很平庸。总的来说，高盛合理利用了它的资源，在所罗门先生的任期内产生了14% 的有形资产回报率。但是它的表现是不稳定的，从2021年初的33% 跌到最近一个季度的5% 。在一半的时间里，它落后于美国同行，而在三分之二的时间里，落后于两大行业领军企业摩根大通和摩根士丹利。投资者认为，高盛只值其资产的净账面价值(即清算价值) ，这表明他们怀疑高盛能否持续创造高回报，或者能否找到利润丰厚的新领域。

Goldman’s struggles point to several lessons. One is that it still excels, but in a bad industry. Investment banking combines the drawbacks of a regulated activity (capital requirements and red tape) with the vices of a speculative one (volatility and capture by employees). The firm says it has become more disciplined on pay but last year forked out $15bn, its second-highest salary and bonus bill since the financial crisis, even as profits halved to $11bn and the firm barely beat its cost of capital. The real action in finance is outside regulated banking, where a new cohort of stars rules, including Blackstone in private markets, BlackRock in index funds, and Citadel, an investing and trading house that made its clients $16bn in 2022.

高盛的困境道出了几大教训。其中之一是，它仍然出类拔萃，但其处于一个糟糕的行业。投资银行业既有监管活动(资本要求和繁文缛节)的缺点，也有投机活动(波动性和员工捕获)的缺点。该公司表示，在薪酬方面已变得更加自律，但去年（不情愿地）支付了150亿美元，这是自金融危机以来第二高的薪酬和奖金支出，尽管利润减半至110亿美元，而且该公司的资本成本勉强高于这一水平。金融领域的真正行动是在受监管的银行业之外进行的，在那里，一批新的明星银行掌控着市场，包括私募市场领域的黑石、指数基金领域的贝莱德 ，以及2022年为其客户带来160亿美元收入的投资和交易机构城堡投资。

Another lesson is that it is hard to compete in winner-takes-all digital markets. Goldman thought that brains and brand were enough. Not true. It has spent billions, but its customer base remains a fraction of that of PayPal or Amazon. JPMorgan reaches 66m American households, but maintains a vast physical network of branches. Goldman has achieved digital scale by teaming up with Apple to provide a credit card. However, given that the tech giant has almost a billion paying subscribers, Apple holds the whip hand in that relationship.

另一个教训是，在赢者通吃的数字市场上很难竞争。高盛认为，人才和品牌就足够了。（事实）并非如此。它已经花费了数十亿美元，但其客户基础仍然只是贝宝或亚马逊的一小部分。摩根大通的业务覆盖了6600万美国家庭，但仍维持着庞大的分支机构网络。高盛通过与苹果合作提供信用卡，实现了数字化规模。然而，鉴于这家科技巨头拥有近10亿付费用户，苹果在这种关系中占据了主导地位。

A final lesson is that the stagnation of globalisation has shrunk Wall Street’s horizons. In the decade after Goldman listed, international revenues provided half of its growth, as its bankers conquered Europe and then broke into Asia. Today they supply a third of growth, as local competitors have emerged and some countries have become wary of foreign financiers. The number-one arranger of shares and bonds last year in China was citic Securities; in India Kotak Mahindra and Axis led the pack. These are names that many on Wall Street may not know.

最后一个教训是，全球化的停滞缩小了华尔街的视野。在高盛上市后的10年里，国际收入贡献了其一半的增长，因为高盛的银行家征服了欧洲，然后进军亚洲。如今，随着本土竞争对手的出现，以及一些国家开始对外国金融家保持警惕，国际收入贡献了三分之一的增长。去年，中国最大的股票和债券承销商是中信证券，印度领头的公司是 Kotak Mahindra 和 Axis。这许多华尔街人士可能并不知道这些名字。

Raging bulls

Can Goldman recover its swagger? Mr Solomon is wisely laying off staff and shrinking the bank’s proprietary investments. Over time he may be vindicated by prosaic changes—running its asset-management arm better, say, or pioneering new tech to cut exorbitant labour costs—or even by orchestrating a merger.

高盛还能重振雄风吗？所罗门先生正明智地裁员并缩减了银行的自营投资业务。随着时间的推移，他可能会通过平淡无奇的改变来证明自己，比如更好地经营其资产管理部门，或者开发新技术以降低过高的劳动力成本，甚至通过精心策划合并。

Yet there is something uniquely hard about reforming elite firms whose unwritten code is that they are smarter than everyone else. Just ask McKinsey, a scandal-magnet once known as the world’s most-admired consultancy. Goldman’s culture of self-regard remains at odds with the facts. Instead it now needs to be self-critical. For yesterday’s masters of the universe, that may be the hardest leap of all.

然而，对于那些不成文的准则是他们比其他公司都聪明的精英公司来说，改革是一件特别困难的事情。问问麦肯锡就知道了，这家吸引丑闻的公司曾被誉为全球最受尊敬的咨询公司。高盛的自负文化仍与事实不符。相反，它现在需要自我批评。对于昔日的“宇宙主宰者 ”来说，这可能是最艰难的一步。