[13][20] It pioneered the "white knight" strategy in 1974 during its attempts to defend Electric Storage Battery against a hostile takeover bid from International Nickel and Goldman's rival, Morgan Stanley.

[30] Robert Rubin and Stephen Friedman assumed the co-senior partnership in 1990 and pledged to focus on globalization of the firm to strengthen the merger & acquisition and trading business lines.

[34] Rubin had drawn criticism in Congress for using a Treasury Department account under his personal control to distribute $20 billion to bail out Mexican bonds, of which Goldman was a key distributor.

[59][60] The pair, members of Goldman's structured products group in New York City, made a profit of $4 billion by "betting" on a collapse in the subprime market and shorting mortgage-related securities.

[61] The firm initially avoided large subprime write-downs and achieved a net profit due to significant losses on non-prime securitized loans being offset by gains on short mortgage positions.

[64][65] The Federal Reserve's approval of their bid to become banks ended the business model of an independent securities firm, 75 years after Congress separated them from deposit-taking lenders, and capped weeks of chaos that sent Lehman Brothers into bankruptcy and led to the rushed sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America[66] On September 23, 2008, Berkshire Hathaway agreed to purchase $5 billion in Goldman's preferred stock, and also received warrants to buy another $5 billion in Goldman's common stock within five years.

[69] In that same period, however, CEO Lloyd Blankfein and six other senior executives opted to forgo bonuses, stating they believed it was the right thing to do, in light of "the fact that we are part of an industry that's directly associated with the ongoing economic distress".

[79] In 2008, Goldman Sachs started a "Returnship" internship program after research and consulting with other firms led them to understand that career breaks happen and that returning to the workforce was difficult, especially for women.

[85] Global Alpha was described by The Wall Street Journal as a "big, secretive hedge fund"—the "Cadillac of a fleet of alternative investments" that had made millions for Goldman Sachs by 2006.

[95] In 2014, Goldman Sachs acquired an 18% stake in DONG Energy (now Ørsted A/S), the largest electric utility in Denmark, from the Danish government after the company needed fresh capital but was unable to attract state funding.

[132] In September 2022, Goldman Sachs announced the layoff of hundreds of employees across the company, apparently as a result of the earnings report from July of the same year that showed a significant reduction.

This decision marks another instance in a series of rollbacks concerning corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, which have faced significant criticism from conservative groups.

[137] The company has been criticized for lack of ethical standards,[138] working with dictatorial regimes,[139] close relationships with the U.S. federal government via a "revolving door" of former employees,[140] and driving up prices of commodities through futures speculation.

[160] That same period, however, CEO Lloyd Blankfein and 6 other senior executives opted to forgo bonuses, stating they believed it was the right thing to do because they were part of the industry that caused economic distress.

However, due to the size and nature of the payouts, there was considerable controversy in the media and among some politicians as to whether banks, including Goldman Sachs, should have been forced to take greater losses and should not have been paid in full via government loans to AIG.

[175] Although many have said there is no evidence to support the claim,[176] some have argued that Goldman Sachs received preferential treatment from the government by participating in the crucial September meetings at the New York Fed, which decided AIG's fate.

Furthermore, Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar stated that CEO Blankfein had never "met" with US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to discuss AIG;[178] however, they had frequent phone calls.

[182] On July 15, 2003, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley were sued for artificially inflating the stock price of RSL Communications by issuing untrue or materially misleading statements in research analyst reports, and paid $3,380,000 (~$5.37 million in 2023) for settlement.

[212] In February 2011, the Washington Examiner reported that Goldman Sachs was "the company from which Obama raised the most money in 2008", and that its "CEO Lloyd Blankfein has visited the White House 10 times".

[213] In 1986, Goldman Sachs investment banker David Brown pleaded guilty to charges of passing inside information on a takeover deal that eventually was provided to Ivan Boesky.

[223] Authors Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera stated that "the firm's later insistence that it was merely a 'market maker' in these transactions – implying that it had no stake in the economic performance of the securities it was selling to clients – became less true over time"-[224] The investments were called synthetic CDOs because unlike regular collateralized debt obligations, the principal and interest they paid out came not from mortgages or other loans, but from premiums to pay for insurance against mortgage defaults – the insurance known as "credit default swaps".

[235] In reply, Goldman issued a statement saying the SEC's charges were "unfounded in law and fact", and in later statements maintained that it had not structured the portfolio to lose money,[238] that it had provided extensive disclosure to the long investors in the CDO, that it had lost $90 million, that ACA selected the portfolio without Goldman suggesting Paulson was to be a long investor, that it did not disclose the identities of a buyer to a seller, and vice versa, as it was not normal business practice for a market maker,[238] and that ACA was itself the largest purchaser of the Abacus pool, investing US$951 million.

[244][245] Describing Bear Stearns's reasoning, one author compared the deal to "a bettor asking a football owner to bench a star quarterback to improve the odds of his wager against the team".

Some critics, such as Matt Taibbi, believe that allowing a company to both "control the supply of crucial physical commodities, and also trade in the financial products that might be related to those markets", is "akin to letting casino owners who take book on NFL games during the week also coach all the teams on Sundays".

[263] Although it was described by others as just a conspiracy theory,[264][265] in a July 2013 article, David Kocieniewski, a journalist with The New York Times, accused Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms of "capitalizing on loosened federal regulations" to manipulate "a variety of commodities markets", particularly aluminum, citing "financial records, regulatory documents, and interviews with people involved in the activities".

[141] In August 2013, Goldman Sachs was subpoenaed by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission as part of an investigation into complaints that Goldman-owned metals warehouses had "intentionally created delays and inflated the price of aluminum".

[268] Columnist Matt Levine, writing for Bloomberg News, described the conspiracy theory as "pretty silly", but said that it was a rational outcome of an irrational and inefficient system which Goldman Sachs may not have properly understood.

"[304] The opposition-led National Assembly voted to ask the United States Congress to investigate the deal, which they called "immoral, opaque, and hypocritical given the socialist government's anti-Wall Street rhetoric".

[306] Sheila Patel, CEO of Goldman Sachs Asset Management's international division, said that the incident was a learning experience that taught the bank to focus on environmental, social, and corporate governance issues.

[310] Non-employee members of the board of directors of the company are M. Michele Burns, Mark Flaherty, Kimberley Harris, Kevin Johnson, Ellen J. Kullman, Lakshmi Mittal, Adebayo Ogunlesi, Peter Oppenheimer, Jan E. Tighe, Jessica Uhl, and David Viniar.