Business

Purest Goldman

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Critics wishing the top-to-bottom review undertaken in May by Lloyd Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs would result in the firm turning over a new, gold-encrusted leaf in the coming weeks better keep on wishing.

It turns out the recently completed seven-month, exhaustive review has found that what Goldman Sachs needs is to be more like Goldman Sachs, The Post has learned.

The review, undertaken by a hand-picked Business Standards Committee chaired by Gerald Corrigan, its chairman, has concluded that the best fix for what’s ailing its once vaunted franchise is for Goldman to get back to what it does best, according to people who have seen parts of the bank’s review.

That is, put the client first.

“[Goldman] is trying to re-dedicate itself to its core principles,” said one source familiar with the Business Standards review. “But the changes might not be viewed necessarily as radical,” the source notes.

In fact, Blankfein has described to confidants that the changes resulting from the committee’s review will be surprisingly “un-dramatic,” sources have told The Post.

Goldman undertook the most exhaustive review in its 140-year history a month after a withering attack from Washington regulators and lawmakers culminated with nationally televised hearings where the reputations of the firm and its highest-ranking executives were sullied — and with the Securities and Exchange Commission charging Goldman with fraud.

“It’s all about where you are in the spectrum of the process of [reform]. If you are of the mind that wholesale changes and not partial change are needed to be made then perhaps [this change] isn’t enough,” one insider said of the results of the review. “But if the question is, ‘Does this move the needle forward for Goldman?’ I think the answer is yes,” said the insider.

The committee, co-chaired by the bank’s Asia boss, Michael Evans, is consolidating its results from the review and is slated to make its findings public sometime early next month, sources said.

The changes suggested, according to insiders, deal primarily with:

* How Goldman treats conflicts of interest, and

* How well the firm discloses information to its clients and shareholders.

Such conflicts sat at the heart of the SEC lawsuit that charged Goldman with not disclosing the role of hedge fund hot-shot John Paulson in creating complex mortgage securities.

Some of the outside experts and academics with whom Goldman has consulted as a part of the review have pointed to how Goldman needs to improve how it shares information, including regulatory investigations, with the outside world.

Goldman has culled thoughts from outsiders, managing directors and several dozen of its some 470 highly-paid partners in a project one insider described as one of the most consuming the firm has embarked upon in its 140-year history.

While the review caused some trepidation inside the firm, Blankfein has joked that the selection of people for the review committee created more waves than the actual changes, sources tell The Post.

That’s because Goldman officials believed that being a member of the committee reflected their status within the gilded firm’s ranks.

Goldman agreed to settle the SEC charges in July for $550 million without admitting or denying any wrongdoing.

mark.decambre@nypost.com