Financial Regulatory Forum

   By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
   BOSTON, April 20 (Reuters) – Clients with Paulson & Co, which was involved in a mortgage deal that prompted civil fraud charges against Goldman Sachs <GS.N>, spoke with the manager on Monday, but so far no one has notified the firm of plans to leave his fund, several investors said. (more…)

   By Steve Eder and Steve Slater
   NEW YORK/LONDON, April 20 (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc <GS.N> said first-quarter earnings nearly doubled, and Britain’s financial regulator launched a formal probe related to civil fraud allegations against the Wall Street bank. (more…)

By Matthew Goldstein

NEW YORK, April 19 (Reuters) The civil lawsuit filed by securities regulators against Goldman Sachs Group from the sale of a security linked to subprime mortgages may not open the floodgates for similar enforcement actions of its kind as some believe might happen.

In fact, the case lodged by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Goldman and a 31-year-old bond salesman may prove to be more rare than initially believed, a close reading of legal documents in the matter reveals.

(more…)

   By Hugo Dixon and Richard Beales
   LONDON/NEW YORK, April 19 (Reuters Breakingviews) – Were the investors who lost $1 billion by buying a fearfully complex product sold by Goldman Sachs <GS.N> in the dying days of the credit boom fools or victims? That’s the key distinction on which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s fraud charges, which roiled the investment bank when they were unveiled on Friday, hinge. (more…)

      By John Kemp — John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The  views expressed are his own – 
   LONDON, April 16 (Reuters) – It is now virtually certain financial reform legislation will go sailing through the Senate, following the complaint filed against Goldman Sachs <GS.N> and an employee in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by the Securities and Exchange Commission this afternoon. (more…)

By Jane Baird

LONDON, March 2 (Reuters) – New bank capital rules could deal the final blow to any resurgence of deals in synthetic collateralised debt obligations as well as hurt the value of $330 billion of existing triple-A tranches, Goldman Sachs said.

Proposed changes to Basel II rules, effective end-2010, would increase bank capital requirements by an estimated 11.5 percent overall and 223.7 percent in the trading book, according to a study by the Bank for International Settlements.

At the height of the financial crisis, fears of a market meltdown and defaults of investment-grade credits such as Lehman Brothers drove spreads of synthetic CDOs, also known as collateralised synthetic obligations (CSOs), sharply wider.