Lloyd Blankfein Has 3 Billion Reasons to Celebrate
The happiest man in New York today? That would be Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, which announced this morning that the bank reeled in a record $13.8 billion in revenue for the second quarter and generated profits of $3.44 billion. It's a big turnaround from a few months ago when the firm was holding out its hand for billions in bailout dollars, of course. But that's water under the bridge. And no one seems to be so sure how Goldman managed to do it. Blankfein attributed the big gains to "the combination of improving financial market conditions and a deep and diverse client franchise" in a news release today, whatever that means. But who cares how Goldman did it? The important thing is to go out and celebrate, right?
Unfortunately, how Lloyd and the gang plan to mark the big occasion is still unknown. We just put a call into Blankfein's office and asked if he had anything exciting in store for this evening. A big dinner, perhaps? A jaunt to Vegas? We didn't get any answers. A polite "no comment" was issued and we were advised to direct our questions to the company's PR department. We just followed up by email with Lucas van Praag, Goldman's global head of corporate communications. We'll let you know as soon as we hear back!
