Wall St. Brief: Goldman Sachs BLOWS Earnings, Yahoo POACHES CEO from Google

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS) reported second quarter earnings at $962 million ($1.78 per share). This 11 percent decline compares to a $1.05 billion profit ($1.85 per share) from 2011. Revenue was $6.63 billion as compared to $7.28 billion in the previous year. Analysts’ estimates had the company earning $1.17  per share on $6.22 billion revenues.

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CEO Lloyd Blankfein said in a press release, ”During the second quarter, market conditions deteriorated and activity levels for both corporate and investing clients were lower given continued instability in Europe and concerns about global growth.”

Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) poached Marissa Mayer from Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) as its new CEO; she oversaw Google Maps, Earth and Places. With her engineering background, Mayer is expected to bring a product focus, reported the New York Times. Mayer will hit the ground running as she starts her new role today with Yahoo announcing its second quarter results. Earnings per share is expected to increase to $0.23 from $0.18 and revenues will rise 1.8 percent to $1.1 billion.

In another management change, VMware (NYSE:VMW) got rid of its CEO Paul Maritz and replaced him with EMC’s (NYSE:EMC) COO Pat Gelsinger, reported CRN. It’s uncertain whether Maritz will take another job at EMC, which is an 80 percent owner of VMware – Maritz. In addition, another VMware/EMC story floating around is that the company will spin off their cloud services and analytics software ops.

GM (NYSE:GM) is expected to select today at is board meeting, former restructuring consultant Thomas Sedran as the interim CEO of its Opel unit reported Reuters; he will replace Karl-Friedrich Stracke, who was fired by the company last Thursday. Sedran will face challenges including overcapacity and restoring Opel’s bruised image in Germany.

According to a report released by Senate investigators, HSBC (NYSE:HBC) conducted business with firms associated with terrorism, failed to watch over Mexico money-laundering violations and avoided U.S. sanctions against Iran. HSBC will get an opportunity to defend itself as executives will appear at a hearing today.

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