WSJ's Fun With Numbers On Goldman and Citi

Universal banks’ broad mix of businesses means they are “well-positioned to withstand Wall Street’s unrest,” Robin Sidel argues ($) in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. She even has some numbers!:

With more than $2 trillion in assets, Citigroup raked in $89.6 billion in revenue last year. That's more than twice the $37.7 billion recorded by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., with a far smaller $943 billion in assets on its balance sheet. [Emph. added]

Case closed! Say, wait a minute... Eight-nine billion dollars in revs off a $2 trillion asset base is roughly the same, percentage-wise, as $37.7 billion in revs off a $943 billion asset base. What’s Citi’s edge, again?

And if you look at return on assets, a much more relevant measure than the numbers Sidel presents, there’s not much difference between the two companies: Citi earned 1.27% over the past twelve months, while Goldman earned 1.22%. So the actual data doesn’t seem to support Sidel’s point at all.

It’s as if her editor told her what her conclusion should be and to go find some numbers to back it up. This must be the best she could come up with, so she presented it in as convoluted a way as she could and hoped no one would notice. It’s an effort worthy of Eric Dash! Weak, I say...