Goldman Sachs is considering new limits on how its employees chat.
The firm is contemplating a new policy to prohibit employees from using peer-to-peer chat services provided by Bloomberg L.P., Yahoo and other third-party companies, a person close to the situation said. The ban would not affect the use of chat rooms, which have more than two people, provided by those services.
Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
Many traders and bankers rely on chat applications, a service that Bloomberg has long dominated, to communicate with each other quickly. Instant Bloomberg, as it is known, is generally available only to users with access to a Bloomberg terminal, which costs roughly $20,000 a year.
But many major Wall Street firms have made moves away from relying on Bloomberg’s expensive communications tool. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Citigroup and Barclays have teamed up to join a separate chat service, operated by the industry-owned firm Markit.
It was unclear to what extent the new service was motivating the Goldman proposal. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday night that Goldman had drafted an internal memo on the proposed chat restrictions in an effort to prevent proprietary information from leaking outside the firm.
In August, Bloomberg said it was changing some of its journalism operations after an internal inquiry found privacy breaches with some of the terminals’ client data. Clients were unaware that journalists had access to certain information, including when bank employees had last used the Bloomberg terminal and for what basic purposes.
Bloomberg could not be immediately reached for comment.
News about the potential chat restrictions also comes as authorities are investigating Goldman and other big banks over allegations of widespread currency manipulation. Federal authorities have suggested that traders may have used chat rooms to alter the price of foreign currencies, and those messages and other similar activity at banks like Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Citigroup have come under scrutiny.
