London, March 14:

Goldman Sachs has started 2007 as it ended 2006, with bumper profits and the promise of another round of hefty staff bonuses despite fears on Wall Street that last year’s record performance could not be repeated.

Wall Street’s biggest firm yesterday reported record quarterly net revenues for the first three months of 2007 and put aside $6.11 billion to pay bonuses to its 30,000 staff, up 15 per cent on the same period in 2006. Net profits were a record $3.2 billion, up from $2.48 billion in the period last year.

Goldman is the first of top US investment banks to report figures for first quarter, which ended on February 23 so does not cover the recent rout in worlds stock markets. They do catch turmoil in credit markets where subprime mortgages in the US have been causing concern.

“It was clearly an exceptional first quarter,” said David Viniar, chief financial officer of Goldman Sachs. The flow of mergers and acquisitions was healthy, with pending deals at their highest since 2000, when the last bull market peaked.

Viniar said fears that problems in the mortgage market would hurt Goldman’s figures had been overblown while Lloyd Blankfein, the chairman and chief executive, indicated that recent market turmoil was unlikely to affect business.

Last year he was awarded a record-breaking $53m bonus in cash, stock and options after a bumper year for mergers, acquisitions and other activities. “While market conditions will regularly shift, we are confident that our client-driven strategy will continue to produce the strongest results for the firm,” he said.

The group’s total revenues reached $12.7 billion.

Revenues in equities were a record $3 billion, up 26 per cent on the previous record set in the first quarter of 2006.

The one area of disappointment was in asset management where revenues were down because of lower performance fees following disappointment with one of Goldman’s hedge funds.