Investment banks: My stock’s bigger than yours

Wall Street’s kickoff to 2005 has been a mighty one, judging by the first set of earnings results from three top securities firms. Goldman Sachs is the latest to defy market expectations that its profit engines would slow down. Not only did Goldman pop out a 27% increase in net income in the first quarter from the previous one, it blew analyst forecasts away by a third – a feat Lehman Brothers managed earlier in the week. On this basis, Goldman buzzed past Morgan Stanley, which only topped cons...