---
title: "Goldman Sachs Sheds Some Secrecy to Win Over Skeptical Investors"
description: "Top executives at the investment firm hope that more openness with financial disclosure will help the stock price"
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "Business Maverick"
author: "Wall Street Journal"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/wall-street-journal/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-01-07-eskoms-new-ceo-engaged-in-questionable-stock-sales-at-sasol-2/"
published: "2020-01-07T22:56:54"
updated: "2020-01-07T23:21:31"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 485
---

# Goldman Sachs Sheds Some Secrecy to Win Over Skeptical Investors

> Top executives at the investment firm hope that more openness with financial disclosure will help the stock price

By Wall Street Journal · Published 8 January 2020, 00:56 SAST · Updated 8 January 2020, 01:21 SAST

## Content

## [Goldman Sachs Group](https://quotes.wsj.com/GS)[https://quotes.wsj.com/GS?mod=chiclets](https://quotes.wsj.com/GS?mod=chiclets)will release new details about how and where it makes money, a shot of transparency it hopes will win over sceptical investors and boost a stock price stuck in neutral.

An overhaul of the bank’s financial disclosures will peel back the curtain on Goldman’s lending and proprietary bets and reshape its quarterly reports to investors to look more like those of peers [JPMorgan Chase](https://quotes.wsj.com/JPM) & Co. and [Bank of America](https://quotes.wsj.com/BAC) Corp. , [whose shares are more richly valued by investors](https://www.wsj.com/articles/congratulations-bear-stearns-jpmorgans-stock-triple-erases-deal-discount-11577269801?mod=article_inline).

The changes are the latest effort by Goldman to shed some of its signature secrecy. For many investors, the changes are long overdue, though it remains to be seen whether they will generate enthusiasm for a stock that hasn’t grown meaningfully since 2007.

Goldman's stock priceSource: FactSet

’202012’1675100125150175200225250275$300Feb 1, 2019x$196.54

Chief Executive David Solomon and his team have privately griped about the stock’s decadelong sideways bounce. At an off-site last year, Solomon and his No. 2 executive, John Waldron, told Goldman’s partners they believed the stock, worth $200 a share at the time and now around $230, could trade at $400 or more, according to attendees. Goldman executives get a big portion of their annual pay in shares.

That kind of jump will require improvement in Goldman’s underlying business, particularly its challenged trading arm. But Solomon and his deputies, including finance chief Stephen Scherr, are betting that more openness will help in the meantime. For all of Goldman’s changes since the financial crisis—[building a consumer bank](https://www.wsj.com/articles/goldman-sachs-tries-banking-for-the-masses-its-been-a-struggle-11569643252?mod=article_inline), reining in freewheeling traders, lowering its funding costs—investors still view the firm as more prone to market swings than rivals and less willing to explain its results.

Later this month, Goldman will hold its first investor day, where it will lay out a blueprint for growth and new metrics it aims to hit. The latest changes are the first glimpse, reorganizing the bank’s business around four pillars: services for corporate clients, trading firms, money managers and individuals.

The last time Goldman made major changes to its financial disclosures, it was from a position of weakness. [Seeking to beat back criticism](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703779704576074360288635474?mod=article_inline) that it had abused its muscle and trading savvy to profit at the expense of clients, the bank in 2011 started disclosing how much money it made investing for its own account.

That gave rise to its “investing and lending” segment, a roughly $130 billion grab bag of loans and proprietary bets that shareholders never warmed to. Goldman is now nixing that segment and will instead give more details about those holdings.

Loans to companies—still a small business, but one Goldman has been growing—will be reported alongside other corporate fees from advising on mergers and underwriting initial public offerings. Loans to hedge funds will be broken out in Goldman’s trading arm.

A new division will track revenue from wealth management, where the firm is branching out beyond billionaires to younger and less-wealthy clients.