Wall Street's top investment bank Goldman Sachs today reported profits of 3.46 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2010, which exceeded analysts' expectations, according to dpa. The bank's profits for the first three months to March nearly doubled from the year-earlier period, when it posted profits of 1.8 billion dollars. It reported revenues of 12.8 billion dollars. The results are from the months before a US financial regulator charged Goldman Sachs with defrauding investors in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis that derailed the global economy. The first civil charges in relation to Wall Street's near collapse were brought Friday by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which alleged that Goldman Sachs colluded with a hedge fund client, Paulson & Co, to make money out of the sub-prime housing market - a controversial sector in which banks offered loans with fast-rising interest rates to homebuyers with a poor credit history. Britain's financial watchdog said Tuesday it would also launch a formal enforcement investigation of Goldman Sachs following the fraud charges in the US. The SEC said Goldman Sachs helped Paulson bet against its own sub- prime mortgage-backed securities. Such loans constituted a major chunk of the US housing market, the collapse of which led Wall Street to the brink of disaster in October 2008. Goldman's actions cost investors in sub-prime loans more than 1 billion dollars and Paulson made about 1 billion dollars out of the scheme, the SEC claimed. Goldman earned 15 million dollars from Paulson for its services. The Wall Street icon rejected the allegations: "The SEC's charges are completely unfounded in law and fact and we will vigorously contest them and defend the firm and its reputation." David Viniar, the firm's chief financial officer, said Tuesday: "You can see from our results last quarter that our clients still support us. As long as we continue to perform for our clients, they will be happy with us." He said, "Economic growth throughout the world remained the single-most important driver of our performance." "Goldman is continuing to take market share, and I think that's the key move for them coming out of the financial crisis," Jason Tyler, senior vice president at Ariel Investment LLC, told Bloomberg TV. "Goldman is a clear winner as people are trying to figure out who they are going to do business with." dpa ar aw
