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Goldman IPO is a go
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September 8, 1998: 1:47 p.m. ET
Investment firm reportedly says public offering is still on, despite speculation
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Despite the hostile environment for public stock offerings and lower projected profits, Goldman, Sachs & Co. apparently told employees Tuesday it will proceed with its November IPO as planned.
At the same time, executives at the leading Wall Street investment firm said third-quarter profits will fall short of the record earnings Goldman Sachs achieved during the first half of the year. Still, Jon Corzine and Henry Paulson, the company's co-chief executives, said they were pleased with the results.
An unnamed source within the company said Corzine told employees in a conference call Tuesday that the planned public stock offering will proceed, Reuters news agency reports.
Some investment bankers had suggested Goldman might pull the plug on its IPO considering the volatility of global markets, which has driven stock prices down.
The company has 11,500 employees worldwide.
Early last month, Goldman said its 190 partners overwhelmingly approved a plan to take the company public, a move that would end its 129-year run as a partnership. Last month, the company filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to sell an equity stake of 10 percent to 15 percent of the company.
Experts valued the IPO at anywhere from $25 billion to $30 billion.
IPOs this year are down 22 percent from last year, and half the offerings scheduled for August were pulled. For September, usually an active month for public offerings, only a handful of issues are on the books.
IPO analyst Linda Killian said the "IPO market right now is in a complete shutdown."
"We are not going to see any IPO's test the waters until late September," she said. "We have about 150 deals on the IPO calendar and we predict at least a third of those will be postponed."
Of the 248 companies that went public this year, just 34 of them are trading at or above their offering price.
John Fitzgibbon, editor of IPO Aftermarket, said investors can be unforgiving to newly public companies.
"They are new, therefore untested, untried in a volatile type market," he said. "You see that downdraft hit them first." 
-- from staff and wire reports
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Goldman Sachs
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