Goldman Sachs held a conference call for clients of the private wealth management unit this afternoon.

Lloyd Blankfein was on the call, as were several journalists who were no doubt leaked the call-in number and not thrown off as they usually are. As expected, the entire call seemed to be a nice advertisement for Goldman with Lloyd repeating most of what he said on Charlie Rose last week. This quote from the call pretty much sums it up:

“We don’t want people to just be happy to be with Goldman. We want them to be bragging.”

Tell that to IKB Deutsche Industriebank.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker

In case you missed it, here’s Lloyd Blankfein’s first extended television interview in, well, we can’t remember how long. Goldman has long been a firm that refused to answer most journalists’ questions and usually gave a “no comment” to interview requests, even the most innocuous ones.

But, as Lloyd told Charlie Rose on Friday, the firm is doing some “soul searching.” He conceded the firm’s longstanding strategy of not engaging with the public was “probably a mistake.” (Secretive hedge funds take note.) That strategy sowed a misunderstanding among the public at large about what the firm actually does, he said.Well, it’s taken a financial meltdown, civil fraud allegations and, most importantly, a big drop in its stock price for Goldman to finally realize it needs a better way of telling its story. It recently hired Mark Fabiani, a crisis management expert who was a special counsel to President Bill Clinton, to help repair its image.

“We’re very important but the public doesn’t see that,” Blankfein said on the show. “There are ways in which I can do a better job of informing people about markets and what we do and the contribution we make. We have to be more transparent.”

On the Volcker Rule, Blankfein said it would only affect about 10 percent of the firm’s revenues. “If we eliminated all the activity that’s unrelated to client activity at Goldman Sachs, it would probably do away with about 10 percent of our revenue,” he said. Also, forget any notion of Goldman reverting back to a private partnership, as some have suggested, because it needs access to permanent capital, Blankfein said on the show.

In addition to the strong support from Warren Buffett, the negative publicity doesn’t seem to have affected Goldman’s client business. It advised, along with JPMorgan, on United’s $3 billion merger with Continental and it’s advising, and providing financing, for Pearson’s $3.1 billion sale of its Interactive Data unit.

Article courtesy of Dealbreaker