SEC Kicks Over Financial Stock Manipulation Rocks and Finds... Goldman Sachs

An earlier and related story from April: Secret of Bear Stearns demise revealed: Competitor Goldman Sachs started the run on the bank


Goldman Is Queried About Bear's Fall
By Kate Kelly and Susanne Craig
July 16, 2008
The Wall Street Journal

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is the envy of Wall Street, navigating the credit crisis relatively deftly as many of its peers have been battered.

Now, the big securities firm has come under suspicion, at least from the chiefs of two rivals who have questioned in recent months whether Goldman, even indirectly, might have put pressure on their firms' stocks.

Alan Schwartz, who headed Bear Stearns Cos. when it collapsed in March, has pointedly asked Goldman Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein whether there was any truth to talk that in the days preceding Bear Stearns's fall, traders in Goldman's London office manipulated the struggling firm's stock, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. CEO Richard Fuld Jr., whose firm's shares also have been battered, also has contacted Mr. Blankfein. "You're not going to like this conversation," Mr. Fuld told Mr. Blankfein, according to people familiar with their talk, but he was hearing "a lot of noise" about Goldman traders who allegedly spread negative rumors about Lehman. In recent months, Mr. Fuld has contacted traders he felt may have been bad-mouthing his stock, according to someone familiar with the matter. Spreading rumors one knows to be false with the intention of manipulating a public company's price is illegal.

Mr. Blankfein was taken aback by the inquiry from Mr. Schwartz, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion, even though the former Bear Stearns CEO was quick to add that he didn't believe Mr. Blankfein would ever knowingly tolerate misconduct. Mr. Blankfein responded that he had no knowledge of any alleged manipulation, this person said, adding that he told Mr. Schwartz he would respond severely if he ever discovered such behavior by Goldman traders. Through a spokesman, the Goldman CEO says he doesn't recall the conversation with Mr. Schwartz.

Goldman strongly denies wrongdoing. "We went out of our way to be supportive of Bear and were rigorous about conducting business as usual," spokesman Lucas van Praag said. He said Goldman never altered its terms for doing business with Bear, even as lenders pulled their financing and some trading partners retreated during the troubled securities firm's struggles in early March.

The SEC investigation into Bear's collapse partly involves trading documents, which have been reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The documents indicate that in the weeks before March 16, when Bear Stearns reached its initial agreement to sell itself to J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs International, which encompasses the firm's European trading units, was one of the most-active parties in trading securities known as credit default swaps that it had bought from or sold to Bear Stearns -- more than most other Bear trading partners.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management, the money-management division, exited a number of swaps on behalf of clients, the documents show. Mr. van Praag said it would be unwise "to make assumptions about this information without understanding the underlying transactions." He said Goldman's international unit handles trades "around the world, on behalf of clients" as well as for Goldman itself.

The documents show that a handful of other prominent firms cut their exposures to Bear Stearns, including Chicago hedge fund Citadel Investment Group and New York hedge fund Paulson & Co., which is run by a Bear Stearns alumnus.

Dozens of similar securities known as interest rate swaps, originally bought from or sold to Bear Stearns, were exited by Fairfax International Investments Ltd., a unit of Citadel, and transferred to another internal unit, Citadel Equity Fund Ltd., on March 3. An additional 40 or so credit default swaps were exited separately by Citadel Equity Fund; those contracts were taken on by a variety of other brokers. About 40 trades were exited by the hedge fund Paulson, primarily during the week of March 10, when Bear Stearns nearly ran out of cash.

In recent weeks, SEC investigators have questioned Citadel about its moves to unload complex securities contracts it had either bought or sold from Bear Stearns in early March, according to people familiar with the matter. Citadel executives have explained the moves as having been part of a long-planned restructuring in which certain holdings were transferred from Fairfax to another internal entity, these people say.

Senior people at Paulson & Co., run by former Bear Stearns executive John Paulson, have told associates that the swaps bought or sold from Bear during the March 10 week, most of which were transferred to Goldman, were part of the firm's overall effort to curb exposure to financial-services firms.