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Goldman Sachs’ profit doubled in the second quarter to $3 billion as the Wall Street bank benefited from a rapid recovery in trading activity and its bond and stock traders performed better than expected.
Net income for the quarter exceeded the $2.8 billion analysts expected and was up from $1.2 billion a year earlier.
The recovery of investment banking activities will help Goldman The move ends a tense 12 months in which chief executive David Solomon’s management of the bank has come under criticism.
In a statement, Solomon said he was “pleased with our solid second quarter results as well as our overall performance in the first half of the year.”
ONE recovery in mergers and acquisitions and debt deals have helped Goldman’s shares rise by about a quarter this year to a record, outpacing the 13 percent gain in the KBW Bank Index and the 18 percent gain in the S&P 500 over the same period.
Goldman shares were volatile in pre-market trading on Monday.
Investment banking revenue rose 21 percent to $1.7 billion in the quarter, slightly below forecasts and slower than the 50 percent increase that rival JPMorgan Chase reported last week.
ExxonMobil’s $60 billion acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources was among the deals Goldman advised on in the second quarter, one of the largest since a two-year drought in dealmaking ended.
Revenue from fixed-income trading rose 17 percent to $3.2 billion while Goldman earned $3.2 billion from equity trading, up 7 percent from the same period a year earlier.
Both companies’ performance was better than analysts’ forecasts.
Goldman’s wealth and asset management division, which plays a central role in Solomon’s efforts to make the bank’s earnings more sustainable and less dependent on volatile trading and investment banking, reported a 27 percent rise in revenue to $3.9 billion.
Goldman’s longtime rival, Morgan Stanley, is due to report results on Tuesday.
