SALT LAKE CITY (Reuters) – Some 2,000 miles away from the hustle and bustle of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs Group Inc has found an unlikely second home: Mormon country.

Low taxes and a cheap but well-educated workforce persuaded Goldman to go on a hiring binge in Salt Lake City. The bank now employs 1,300 people here — putting Utah’s capital city on a path to become Goldman’s fourth-largest global operation, behind only New York, New Jersey and London.

SALT LAKE CITY, March 9 (Reuters) – Some 2,000 miles
away from the hustle and bustle of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs
Group Inc has found an unlikely second home: Mormon
country.

Low taxes and a cheap but well-educated workforce
persuaded Goldman to go on a hiring binge in Salt Lake
City. The bank now employs 1,300 people here — putting Utah’s
capital city on a path to become Goldman’s fourth-largest global
operation, behind only New York, New Jersey and London.

By Lauren Tara LaCapra

(Reuters) – Morgan Stanley (MS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has placed a senior investment banker on leave following his arrest this week on assault and hate crime charges for allegedly stabbing a taxi driver over a fare dispute.

William Bryan Jennings, co-head of fixed-income capital markets at the Wall Street bank, was arrested near his home in Darien, Connecticut, on Wednesday, and charged with second-degree assault, larceny and intimidation by bias or bigotry, Detective Mark Cappelli told Reuters.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors are investigating David Loeb, a managing director of Goldman Sachs Group, as part of an insider-trading probe focusing on the company’s hedge-fund clients, a person familiar with the case said on Wednesday.

Loeb works with technology hedge-fund employees, including an Asia-based analyst, Henry King, who is also under investigation, according to another source briefed on the case.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors are investigating David Loeb, a managing director of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, as part of an insider-trading probe focusing on the company’s hedge-fund clients, a person familiar with the case said on Wednesday.

Loeb works with technology hedge-fund employees, including an Asia-based analyst, Henry King, who is also under investigation, according to another source briefed on the case.

By Lauren Tara LaCapra

(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) plans to add 300 workers to its fast-growing office in Salt Lake City, Utah, by the end of the year, Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein told employees at a town hall meeting there on Tuesday, according to a Goldman staffer who was present.

The increase would bring Goldman’s workforce in the city to 1,600, the attendee cited Blankfein as saying. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Feb 28 (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc and
Wells Fargo & Co may face federal enforcement action
related to mortgage-backed securities deals leading into the
financial crisis, the banks said in regulatory filings on
Tuesday.

The disclosures are the latest sign government officials are
stepping up action against banks that packaged home loans into
bonds during the housing boom. The underlying mortgages later
soured, spurring billions in losses for investors.

NEW YORK, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s
purchase of a $6.2 billion portfolio of subprime bonds on
Wednesday illustrates the difficulty regulators may have in
stopping banks from making bets with their own money.

Goldman purchased the portfolio from the Federal Reserve
Bank of New York, which is selling mortgage securities acquired
in 2008 through the bailout of American International Group Inc
.

Feb 8 (Reuters) – Wall Street has been lashing out
against the Volcker rule since it was proposed, but a senior
Goldman Sachs executive said on Wednesday the trading
restriction might actually help the investment bank’s
profitability.

A harsh interpretation of the rule, which bans speculative
trading by commercial banks, could help return-on-equity levels
because banks would be able to demand more money from clients
for executing trades, Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief
Financial Officer David Viniar said at a Credit Suisse
conference in Miami.

By Lauren Tara LaCapra

(Reuters) – Weak revenue and high expenses pushed Lazard Ltd (LAZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) into the red in the fourth quarter, a big miss against analyst forecasts that sent the investment bank’s shares lower.

Lazard’s results reflect clients’ hesitancy to invest or pull the trigger on capital markets transactions in late 2011 as the European debt crisis raged, as well as the burden of high compensation costs on Wall Street.