Goldman Regains Commodities Top Spot in Tie With Banking Rivals

(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. regained its top spot in commodities in the first half of 2018, but had to share that position with rivals Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co., according to research group Coalition Development Ltd.

Goldman, for decades Wall Street’s dominant commodities trader, lost its place among the top three banks in the sector for the first time last year, when losses in natural gas and power dragged it to the worst annual performance in its history as a public company.

But this year the bank has enjoyed a rebound. While it doesn’t break out numbers for commodities, Goldman has said that its net revenues in the sector were “significantly” higher in each of the first two quarters of the year. Bloomberg reported in May that the bank made more money in commodities in the first few months of this year than in all of 2017.

Combined income at the 12 top banks tracked by analytics firm Coalition jumped 38 percent to $2.1 billion in the first half.

Coalition ranked Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan as joint top in commodities revenues in the first half of the year. Citigroup Inc., which last year was third in the ranking, dropped out of the top three.

The researcher’s analysis doesn’t include Australian, Canadian or emerging-market banks that have a large presence in commodities. Australian lender Macquarie Group Ltd., which isn’t part of Coalition’s league table, probably came first in commodities revenue in 2017, the researcher said in March.

Had Macquarie been included in the first-half ranking, it would probably have shared the top spot with Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan, meaning their net revenue from commodities was within 10 percent of one another, said Amrit Shahani, research director at Coalition.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jack Farchy in London at jfarchy@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net, Dylan Griffiths, Nicholas Larkin

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