London: It is the most profitable investment bank on the planet, and is viewed as an awesome money-making machine that runs rings around its rivals and rewards its high fliers with jaw-dropping multi-billion-pound bonuses. Welcome to the world of Goldman Sachs, which has a reputation for managing risk second to none and where savvy traders took huge bets against the overvalued American mortgage market months before the onset of the credit crunch three years ago.
But Goldman's knack for making huge dollops of cash from the markets is matched by its tendency to attract controversy to a degree that separates it from competitors.
The latest furore is over the role Goldman played in helping Greece conceal its debts, which enabled the country to join the European single currency in 2001.
Although it acted entirely legally, critics have heaped opprobrium on the bank, claiming that Goldman sails close to the wind in its endless quest for power and money.
The most stinging criticism last week came from Phil Angelides, chairman of the US financial crisis inquiry commission, who said he had been most struck so far in his probe by the way in which Goldman had been "creating and selling securities and then betting against them".
In reference to Greece, he said the practice extended to the creation and selling of foreign debt instruments. "I find it troubling," he said.
Perhaps the wave of anti-Goldman sentiment can be explained by envy. After all, it is extremely good at what it does and seems more brazen and aggressive than other investment banks, although flamboyant displays of wealth and ego by people who work there are frowned upon.
