Profit return for Goldman

WEDNESDAY, OCT. 17: US bank Goldman Sachs announced yesterday it had rebounded strongly and recorded a profit in the third quarter.

A year ago, it reported a rare quarterly stumble, a performance attributed to losses in the bank’s private equity sector as well as other global economic issues.

For this quarter, nytimes.com reported the firm as having net earnings applicable to common shareholders of $1.46 billion, or $2.85 a share, compared with a loss of $428 million, or 84 cents a share, in the quarter a year earlier.

Goldman’s revenue more than doubled, to $8.35 billion, from $3.59 billion in the year-ago period.

 “This quarter’s performance was generally solid in the context of a still challenging economic environment,” Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

The news is a welcome boost for Goldman after a year in which it has struggled against both economic challenges at home and abroad, while new regulations have reduced profitability.

The firm is, of course, not the only company whose profits have been hit but this quarter its rivals were helped by revenue from a boom in mortgage refinancing, something in which Goldman does have a big presence.

Neverthless, net revenue in Goldman’s fixed income, currency and commodities unit came in at $2.22 billion, 28 percent higher than the third quarter of 2011, the result, the company say, of a boom in trading in mortgages as well as from items like currencies and interest-rate products.