Goldman Temporarily Closes a N.Y. Office

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on Monday temporarily closed one of its downtown New York office locations two days after a steam pipe that controls the air conditioning system and cools the computer systems at One New York Plaza malfunctioned.

A Goldman spokeswoman would not say how many employees had to be moved for now to new quarters. However, Doug Winshall, a senior vice president of TrizecHahn Corp., which manages the property, said employees of the investment banking company occupy 15 of the building's 50 floors, or 600,000 square feet.

In a prepared statement, Goldman said its "trading activity in listed markets, options, futures, prime brokerage and other equities businesses continues unaffected, as are operations at Spear, Leeds & Kellogg." The firm "has temporarily withdrawn from market making activity on the Nasdaq, but intends to resume those operations as soon as possible."

The building's tenants were allowed to decide for themselves whether to close their offices there.

Prudential Securities, another tenant at One New York Plaza, kept its offices there open. The company, which occupies about 1.3 million square feet on 20 floors, said it had a backup cooling system.

The building has about 2.5 million square feet of office space and houses 8,000 to 10,000 people, he said.

Goldman Sachs employees who work at One New York Plaza - including equity traders, equity researchers, equity capital markets bankers, and the legal team - were allowed to enter the building to retrieve their belongings and any materials they needed to continue working, employees said.

The company chose to relocate its employees because it has other nearby offices in lower Manhattan, Mr. Winshall said.

Lori Appelbaum, a bank analyst at Goldman, who was working Monday from at the company's 32 Old Slip offices, said her situation was worse than that of most of her colleagues, because she had no telephone or e-mail access.

She said she may be able to return to her One New York Plaza office today, but would more likely be able to do so on Wednesday.

The steam pipe broke on Saturday morning and forced the building's air conditioning to be suspended. By midday Monday a majority of the building's cooling capacity and all of its electrical systems had been restored, TrizecHahn said.

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