<p>BK22889, do you work at GS? It seems like you’re confused a bit about how Goldman operates. Your point may be valid, but for the most part capital raising is done outside of the Securities division.</p>
<p>At GS, capital raising is done in the Financing Group, which sits in IBD, not Securities. GS Securities has a myriad of sales and trading desks, as well as a few principalling desks. The division is first split into FICC and Equities. Then, it is split into products (Macro, Delta One, corporate solutions, equity derivatives, credit, etc.). These products are then further split into sales and trading (granted, some products have sales people but don’t have traders and vice versa - this depends on the product). Within the trading of these products, it is split further into agency/flow trading and proprietary trading (though, not all desks have a prop function). The main principalling desks at GS are the following: SSG and GSPS, the former sitting in FICC and the latter sitting in Equities. Both of these groups use Goldman capital to invest across a variety of strategies, including distressed, illiquids, event-driven, and public/private. Obviously, SSG and GSPS are different from GS PIA (which sits in Merchant Banking) in that they don’t invest through a fund structure on behalf of institutional clients. They are referred to as principal desks because these groups have an enormous exposure to principal risk. These are NOT the only two principal groups in Securities; there are a few other “secret” and mysterious principal groups with very interesting mandates.</p>
<p>C-Revs, you wrote the following:</p>
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<p>Just wanted to clarify that GS does NOT take principal positions through it’s merchant banking division. MB, by definition, implies investing client money. PIA has taken interns and analysts out of college in the past, although historically it has been very difficult to do so. </p>
<p>I would also disagree with the notion that “a lot of the top talent in the bank” is in MB. If you look at the senior guys at Goldman, they were all in some way connected with Securities (Blankfein, Viniar, Holmes, Evans, etc.). More importantly, Goldman Sachs as a firm prides itself on having talent across the board, and not just in one concentrated division. If you think PIA is where all the revenues come from and that the top talent is all there, you don’t know how Goldman runs its businesses. That’s not a jab at you because most people don’t know.</p>
<p>If anyone has any questions about Goldman Sachs, or investment banking/S&T in general, feel free to ask me.</p>