The most interesting part of this announcement is the timing. GS is leading Anthropic's IPO, what motivated them to announce this a few weeks before trading starts?
This wasn't announced, it was an internal leak reported by Bloomberg. Perhaps they should have known it would leak, but there doesn't seem to be any grand strategy.
At a large bank like this, the people responsible for cybersecurity have a completely separate reporting chain and incentives than the ibanking side. If there was a security risk identified, it'd be completely inappropriate to wait a few weeks.
Goldman wants to lead the IPO, and have a successful IPO, because Anthropic and Anthropics investors will give Goldman more business if it does that. However, if Anthropic is overvaluing itself then Goldman may not be filling the book on the offer. This story may drive down the value that investors give to Goldman when it does its research, enabling a lower price on the IPO which will then generate more institutional interest and make the IPO a success.
Probably easier to bury it in election cycle news and current downturn than worry about it closer to the IPO, no?
Conflict of interest? Might as well cover their ass before IPO to claim the underwriting was fair
this is an extremely interesting point
Plausible deniability.
Strats still have access. They probably want the traders to focus on trading and then strats to do this stuff. YTMYTS.
In an honest, well-functioning org, those are decisions made by completely different groups that do not (and should not) report to each other. It's actually kind of depressing that we (and I include myself in that) assume otherwise by default.