Goldman Sachs earned $ 8.466 million in 2019, down 19%

The banking group Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) earned $ 8,466 million in 2019 and thus reduced its profits by 19% compared to 2018, because the bank set aside money to reach a agreement with the Administration to resolve its ties with a corrupt investment fund of Malaysia at once.

The investment and institutional banking group, based in New York, announced today that its annual income reached 36,546 million dollars, an almost negligible decrease from the 36,616 million that it invoiced a year earlier.

Regarding the quarterly results, to which Wall Street analysts paid more attention today, Goldman Sachs earned $ 1,917 million in the last three months of 2019, compared to 2,538 million in the same period last year, a 24% less.

Billing, however, between October and December 31 reached 9,955 million dollars, 23% more than the income experienced by the banking group only one year earlier, when they were 8,080 million.

The results of the last quarter therefore conclude that Goldman’s earnings fell sharply even when the revenues were good, reflecting the firm’s legal breakdown.

Goldman said in this regard that he saved an additional 1.240 million last year to cover the expected legal and regulatory fines.

Much of this will probably go to resolving the US Department of Justice’s investigation into Goldman’s dealings with the Malaysian fund, known as 1MDB.

The bank is in talks to pay approximately 2 billion dollars and plead guilty.

Non-compensation expenses also increased, as the bank spends a lot on new initiatives and technology.

Goldman’s central investment and brokerage businesses maintained well, and their securities traders recovered from poor performance a year earlier.

Unlike JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM) and Citigroup (NYSE: C), which last quarter did well for their gigantic consumer banking businesses, Goldman is still more based on traditional Wall Street operations, where Rates are under pressure and growth is difficult.

The firm is trying to diversify, launching a credit card and building a retail brokerage and commercial banking agency.

Goldman Sachs president and CEO David Solomon, who has just finished his first year at the helm of the entity, said that “the intense work in the fourth quarter helped us deliver solid results for the year, while we continue to invest in new business”.

“Our goal is to generate higher returns in the future, and we hope to share our strategic goals and financial goals later this month,” Solomon announced, in which analysts see a bet by the entity for diversification.

In the operations prior to the start of Wall Street, this commitment to diversification generated a moderate optimism among investors by raising the price by 0.18%, whose revaluation this year has been 24.65%.