Goldman’s Passage to India

Hardev Singh for Hotel Leelaventure Goldman Sachs’s directors could take advantage of the bar at Le Cirque on the 10 floor of the Leela Palace in New Delhi.

NEW DELHI – Nestled in the diplomatic enclave of the capital city here sits the Leela Palace hotel. This week, its ninth floor has been home to the board of Goldman Sachs.

This is the first time the firm’s directors have gathered in India and one of only a handful of times they have met outside of the United States. This meeting is viewed as a nod to India’s growing importance, both to Goldman and to the American economy. Goldman and other banks are increasingly looking overseas for business to offset a slowdown at home. Also this week, leaders from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are meeting here for their 2012 summit meeting.

Goldman directors are required a key card to enter their meeting area, but hotel staff also let visitors up without one. Directors, most of whom were dressed casually, some in polo shirts and jeans, were tight-lipped about the agenda for the meeting when approached by DealBook. But there is certainly no shortage of topics for discussion.

It has been a rough few months for the big bank. Goldman, along with the rest of Wall Street, struggled with lackluster earnings in 2011, and it recently faced conflict-of-interest allegations from a Delaware judge, who criticized Goldman over the multiple roles it played in brokering an energy deal.

Then, earlier this month, a Goldman employee, Greg Smith, sent shock waves through Wall Street when he quit the firm and announced his resignation in an opinion article in The New York Times, criticizing the firm for putting its own interests first and “ripping off clients.”

This week, Goldman directors are expected to review the bank’s first quarter results, which are scheduled to be released on April 17. So far, 2012 is looking better financially than last year.

Financial analysts polled by Thomson Reuters are predicting that Goldman will earn a profit of $3.25 a share, which is up from estimates just a month ago when they were forecasting a profit of $2.94 a share. Estimates are likely to continue to trend up in the weeks leading up to earnings. In the first quarter of 2011, Goldman reported a per-share profit of $3.39.

This meeting may also be one of the last for John H. Bryan, Goldman’s lead director. Mr. Bryan, a former chief executive and chairman of Sara Lee, has been on the board since 1999, the year Goldman went public. He recently turned 75, which will prompt his mandatory retirement from the board unless directors ask him to stick around.

Goldman directors are arriving in New Delhi to be welcomed at the hotel by decorative sandstone elephants. The ninth floor of the hotel is a basic club floor. It has a large, brightly lit conference room and a long, narrow, carpeted corridor with rooms on either side, some of which were converted into temporary offices for the board members.

The hotel itself is loaded with after-hours options for directors, including the restaurants like Le Cirque, which bills itself as an “institution known for its clubby atmosphere and comfort food for billionaires.” Rooms start at roughly $200 a night.

Source & Image : New York Times