Financial Regulatory Forum

By Antony Currie

– The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

LONDON, April 26 (Reuters Breakingviews) – The U.S. Senate’s investigations unit has scored some easy political points in its study of Goldman Sachs’s subprime mortgage activities in 2007. But there is no concrete evidence of wrongdoing, or even of an excessively zealous search for profits, in the four exchanges of embarrassing emails from the Wall Street firm released over the weekend.

Still, Goldman hardly makes a killer case with its defence — that it was merely hedging risk.

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The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released a trove of internal messages and other exhibits from its look at the role credit-rating agencies played in the financial crisis, including several related to the Goldman Sachs Abacus trades at the heart of SEC fraud charges against the bank .  Reuters links to full file of exhibits.

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– The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

By Nicholas Dunbar

LONDON, April 20 (Reuters Breakingviews) – In December 2000 I received an email from the Goldman Sachs press office in New York, nominating the firm for Risk magazine’s “Risk Manager of the Year” award. Central to the pitch was how the Wall Street bank had run a boot camp for its supervisors at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, training them in concepts like value-at-risk and derivatives hedging.

It was a win-win move, both sides told me. Goldman ensured its regulator was up to date with financial innovation and earned brownie points for its efforts. By offering a “light-touch” regime for its charges, the SEC hoped to prevent the securities firms under its purview from basing their fast-growing over-the-counter derivatives operations in London.

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.

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By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) – Bombshell fraud charges against Goldman Sachs, one of the largest swaps dealers on Wall Street, give new impetus to a tough derivatives reform bill proposed by Senate Agriculture Chairman Blanche Lincoln on Friday.

The bill must be meshed with other proposals that are part of Congressional efforts to reform the financial regulatory system. But Lincoln is now placed to play a leading role in the debate on how the final package will impact on the $450 trillion over-the-counter swaps market.

With one eye to the November mid-term elections, the bill could find support from lawmakers keen to take a stand against excess on Wall Street. But it is unclear whether the White House would support going this far.