Goldmans bond desk posts embarrassing drop as Wall Street rivals soar: A fire is being lit under the traders

Goldman Sachs bond traders weathered a disastrous spring — and they’re likely to face major heat from CEO David Solomon to get their act together this summer.Earlier this week, the Wall Street giant reported blowout earnings overall, but revenue in its bond-trading division fell 10% in the first quarter – missing analysts’ expectations by a whopping $910 million.“It was basically just a function of the overall environment making markets,” Goldman CFO Denis Coleman said Monday, as shares in the bank fell as much as 4%.Since then, however, Goldman’s big-bank rivals have reported blockbuster revenues across the board from trading bonds, also known as “fixed income” investments — a major embarrassment for Goldman brass.JPMorgan said it saw fixed income trading revenue jump 21% to $7.1 billion – its second-best result ever.Morgan Stanley’s bond business jumped 29%.

Citigroup’s fixed income revenue jumped 13% to $5.2 billion.At Goldman – where its fixed income, currencies and commodities business, or FICC, has long been seen as an outperformer – the division’s revenue came in at just $4 billion.“It seems that something went wrong at Goldman in fixed income,” Wells Fargo analyst Mike Mayo told CNBC. “I’d imagine that at Goldman, a fire is being lit under the traders, managers and risk overseers in FICC after such an underperformance.”A spokesperson for Goldman pointed The Post to Goldman Sachs president John Waldron’s comments at a Semafor event Wednesday.“In the period of time when you have a lot of volatility around rates in particular and commodities, you can get in traffic where things don’t go your way at any given moment in time,” Waldron said.“You have to end the quarter at a certain date and you show what happened.

If you look at it in the fullness of time, I have no concerns about our FICC business.”Goldman declined to provide further comment.Goldman’s fixed income desk has generated outsized returns for d...