By: Peter A. McKay

April 1, 2006, Wall Street Journal

When most people think of Goldman Sachs Group, they think profit -- lots of it. "If there is one thing we know how to do at Goldman, it's make money," CEO Henry Paulson Jr. boasted to shareholders at the firm's annual meeting Friday in New York.

Goldman is also known for environment pet projects; in 2004 it donated a chunk of land in Chile to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

But two groups, the not-for-profit National Legal and Policy Center and investment adviser Action Fund Management, told Goldman shareholders at the meeting that the firm has gone too far. "If what you do is play baseball, don't try and hit soccer balls at the same time," said Thomas Borelli, managing partner of Action Fund.

The two groups say links between Goldman and environmental groups are conflicts. Mr. Paulson, for instance, is chairman of the Nature Conservancy, and Mr. Borelli says Goldman's environmental policy is similar to key aspects of that group's agenda. He says Goldman has failed to justify its environmental policy as being in the interest of shareholders.

Mr. Borelli's bid to have Goldman's board examine the environmental moves failed. Goldman says Mr. Paulson wasn't involved with these decisions, and the board has already reviewed the issue.

Seifert's 2nd Thoughts

Werner Seifert, ex-CEO of German stock-exchange operator Deutsche Börse AG, has a book coming out Monday that will deliver his version of events that forced him out of a job. Mr. Seifert clashed with a group of shareholders led by the hedge fund Children's Investment Fund Management (UK) for making a preliminary offer for the London Stock Exchange at 530 pence a share ($9.26) -- a bargain given that LSE shares trade at over 1,000 pence a share these days.

Mr. Seifert was once among Germany's chief proponents for introducing more so-called Anglo-Saxon style capitalism in the form of increased shareholder rights and limited regulation.

The events of last summer now convince him that "better regulation and control mechanisms" are necessary, the invitation to the book launch says.

A Boon for Boone

While traders can be crass, the richest ones are crude. Crude-oil traders, that is.

According to Trader Monthly's third-annual ranking of the highest-earning traders in the world, energy traders took delivery of record barrels of cash in 2005. The magazine crowned oil-market fixture T. Boone Pickens the highest-grossing trader with an estimated personal take of $1.5 billion, as his Dallas fund company, BP Capital, made good on a huge bullish bet on crude. A spokesman for Mr. Pickens declines to comment on the estimate but says: "He and the BP Capital team had a good year."

Mr. Pickens beat out SAC Capital Advisors' Steven Cohen (with an estimated haul of $1 billion), Renaissance Technologies Corp.'s James Simons (estimated $900 million to $1 billion), and Tudor Investment Corp.'s Paul Tudor Jones ($800 million to $900 million).

At Refco, It All Goes

Since filing for bankruptcy protection last fall, the scandal-ridden commodity-brokerage firm Refco Inc. has been selling everything but the kitchen sink. Now, even that might go. The consulting firm Great American Group will facilitate the sale of "furniture, fixtures and equipment" from 20 of Refco's offices in the U.S. and Canada, according to a proposal approved by the bankruptcy judge. Great American gets a 15% commission.

The 'Hot Hands'

Wise mutual-fund investors avoid performance chasing. But that may not be the case for hedge-fund investors.

A recent study shows that the fortunes of a given hedge fund tend to stay the same for a while. If it has been on a winning streak for three years, there's a good chance it will continue for the next three; if it hasn't done well, that is unlikely to change dramatically. The study analyzed the returns of more than 1,000 funds from 1997 to 2003.

But locating a skilled fund manager isn't easy. The best managers often set limits on their funds and stop accepting new money after awhile, says Ravi Jagannathan, a finance professor at Northwestern University and one of the authors of the study. That means that buying into a superior fund ultimately involves "having access, and being in the right place at the right time," he adds.

Workplace Humor

April Fool's Day fell on a weekend, and there probably won't be a lot of laughs around the office in the coming week.

Only 9% of executives said it was common for co-workers to play April Fool's jokes on each other at their companies, according to a survey from Accountemps, a Menlo Park, Calif., temporary-staffing firm. The firm polled 150 executives from the 1,000 largest companies.

A popular prank was filling colleagues' offices with oddities like sand or small foam balls. Other execs participated in the jokes, putting tape under a colleague's mouse so they couldn't move it, or turning everything backward in someone's office, including the computer, desk and pictures.

Confident, or delusional, employees sometimes target the boss. "Someone changed the keys on my keyboard," reported one anonymous executive.

With Susanne Craig, Edward Taylor, Ann Davis, Serena Ng and Diya Gullapalli