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Explaining SEC’s case against Goldman Sachs…

SEC claims the following about GS..

Goldman Sachs had played a vital role in this case according to SEC. Paulson & Co, a big Hedge fund in the US had approached GS to help it sell a CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation) consisting of a basket of unworthy assets. The idea was that, GS sells this CDO to investors and Paulson would go short on it. A CDO is basically a pool of debt obligations. This could be used for balance sheet adjustment purposes by companies with unbalanced credit structure or for arbitrage purposes. As investors generally do not prefer to invest in CDOs packaged by Hedge funds, GS approached ACA, whose principle business is to select assets for CDOs, to include their name in the brochures and marketing materials. GS is said to have mislead ACA and ACA believed that the CDO would be packaged by them and Paulson jointly. On the other hand, investors have been told that the CDO was packaged by ACA and weren't informed about Paulson's hands on it. This led to SEC charging GS for 'making materially misleading statements' in its marketing materials. Simply put, GS took slices of the CDO and sold them to the investors and Paulson went short on it, making it sound like a pre-arranged market pariticipation. GS took a commission of $15mn from Paulson, Investors lost $1bn betting on the losing chunk of assets and Paulson who betted against it squeezed out a neat profit of $1bn. Enough reasons for a lawsuit!

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