Breakingviews – Vladimir Putin tests even Wall Street’s values – Reuters

Breakingviews – Vladimir Putin tests even Wall Street’s values – Reuters

NEW YORK, March 2 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Goldman Sachs (GS.N) could have bailed on Russia when the government defaulted on its debts at the turn of the century, buried under borrowings Goldman had helped it rack up. Instead, it stuck around, at least nominally. Now, Russia’s pariah status after President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine presents Goldman chief David Solomon and his Wall Street peers with a new dilemma. They're not known for taking principled stands, but this could be the moment.

Big Wall Street banks – Goldman plus JPMorgan (JPM.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N), Citigroup (C.N) and Bank of America (BAC.N) – have earned nearly $500 million in investment banking fees since 2014, the year when Russia annexed Crimea, based on data from Refinitiv. For a while they cooled on the country: by 2016 the five firms’ total share of Russian fees had fallen to 6%. But by 2020 their market share was back at 38%, representing billions of dollars of deals and capital-raisings for Russian companies.