The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is the classic Wall Street firm for investment banking, trading, asset management, and serving institutions rather than ordinary branch customers. By our assessment, what it does best is high-level finance: advising deals, moving through capital markets, and handling money at a scale most banks never touch. The trade-off is that it is not built around the everyday checking-and-savings relationship people expect from a retail bank. In practice the name means a demanding, highly professional, and often opaque kind of finance, with serious expertise at the center. It sits among the top-tier global financial firms, not the neighborhood banks, and that is exactly the point.