Goldman Sachs Shareholders: Show Me the Money*

Here's a surprise: After a year of record profits for Goldman Sachs, the shareholders are demanding an increased slice of the profits:

Some of Goldman Sachs Group's largest shareholders have asked the company to cut the size of its bonus pool and pass along more of its profits to investors, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the situation.

Although the shareholders are not pushing for a huge cut, they feel that Goldman should better reward shareholders for this year's rebound, the paper said.

One of the oddities of Wall Street is that 30 years ago, the investment banks were not publicly held companies, they were limited liability partnerships, where all the profits, at least those not reinvested in the firm (and seriously, how much capital investment does a f$#@ing investment bank need) accrued to the partners.

So in the 1980s and 1990s, they all went public, generated huge cash outs for the partners, and enormous amounts of other people's money with which to wager, but they continued to operate as if they were still partnerships, and that all the money accrued back to them.

Well now, the shareholders are thinking that maybe they should start acting like they own the firm, which, of course, they do.

Hopefully, this is a trend, though I doubt it.

^*Full disclosure: I never saw the movie, Jerry McGuire.