Voice-mail boxes inside Goldman Sachs lit up Jan. 21 with an unusual message from the bank’s chief executive — a bit of Wall Street speak that sounded like the makings of a book on Zen and the Art of Money-Making.

‘‘In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines, I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative,’’ the chief, Lloyd C.

Blankfein, said in the companywide message. He then celebrated the bank’s record profits in 2009 and discussed its plans to pay bonuses to its employees.

Left unanswered now, as then, is the question that all of Wall Street has been chewing on for months: Howmuch will Mr. Blankfein be paid for his remarkable success in running Goldman? Anxious executives at rival banks are awaiting the news with a mixture of envy and alarm. Guesses range from nothing to $100 million. Whatever the final figure is — high, low, or somewhere in between—it will set a benchmark for pay throughout the industry.

Goldman Sachs said Wednesday that no decision had been made.

Goldman employees offered various interpretations of Mr. Blankfein’s voicemail message, one of dozens that he has left since becoming chief in 2006. Many agreed on one point, however: The message was somehow linked to the uproar in Washington and elsewhere in the United States over resurgent profits and pay at big banks like Goldman.

Some heard in the message a call to keep quiet about the many billions of dollars in bonuses that Goldman is paying.

Others said Mr. Blankfein had seemed to be suggesting that Goldman employees, rather than policy makers or the news media, would write their success story by doing what Goldman does best: make money.

A spokesman for Goldman, Lucas van Praag, said everybody had gotten the message, which was that ‘‘performance speaks for itself.’’ Many other big banks disclosed the compensation of their top executives in recent weeks, and Goldman was widely expected to have done the same by now.

The delay has spawned a number of reports about what Goldman would do.

The Times of London, for instance, reported this week that Mr. Blankfein might receive a mind-boggling $100 million, a figure that would eclipse his previous record of $68 million in 2007. He took no bonus in 2008.

‘‘There is speculation, and then there is stupidity,’’ Mr. van Praag said. ‘‘This speculation transcends the simply stupid and takes it to an entirely new level.’’ Even so, Goldman is undoubtedly making some careful political and business calculations. The bank also may be biding its time and waiting for an opportune public relations moment to break the news.

Nearly everyone on Wall Street focuses on the Number, the annual bonus that makes up the vast majority of compensation for bankers and traders. But this year, Mr. Blankfein must also consider what one public relations specialist called the Gag Number—how much he can be paid without unleashing another round of bonus-bashing in Washington.

That limit is uncertain. What is sure is that the politics of pay are as heated as ever. Two Democratic senators, Barbara Boxer of California and Jim Webb of Virginia, planned to propose legislation Thursday that would tax bonuses for top executives at companies that received billions of bailout dollars during the financial crisis. Like most big banks,Goldman paid back the money, with interest.

WhodecidesMr. Blankfein’s pay? The answer may come as a bit of a surprise.

Goldman’s compensation committee comprises 10 outsiders. Among them are Ruth J. Simmons, the president of Brown University in Rhode Island; Lakshmi N. Mittal, the billionaire steel magnate; and James A. Johnson, a Washington insider and former chief executive of FannieMae, who was forced to resign as head of Barack Obama’s vice presidential vetting committee in response to a variety of accusations about corporate missteps. None of those three could be reached for comment Wednesday.

Whatever the size of Mr. Blankfein’s bonus, it will come in the form of longterm stock, rather than cash. Goldman, in a nod to public opinion, has already announced that he and 29 senior executives would forgo cash payments.

Once the compensation committee decides how much stock Mr. Blankfein and those executives should receive and at what price, and the stock is awarded, Goldman has 48 hours to file a Form 4 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Over the last week or so, people on Wall Street have been watching the commission’s Web site for Mr. Blankfein’s filing.

Goldman, meanwhile, has told its thousands of other employees what they might expect for their bonuses. Other Wall Street chiefs have revealed their paydays. Morgan Stanley, for instance, recently announced that its new chief executive, James P. Gorman, was getting about $12 million. But others, like Jamie Dimon ofJPMorganChase,whois expected to be paid $15 million to $20 million, appear to be waiting for Mr. Blankfein’s announcement—and the reaction to it—before announcing their bonuses.

Profit at Deutsche Bank



Reinforcing its position as one of the survivors of the global financial crisis, Deutsche Bank posted its fourth straight quarterly profit after a record loss a year earlier, Jack Ewing reported from Frankfurt on Thursday.

Germany’s largest bank reported a net profit of €1.3 billion, or $1.8 billion, in the last quarter of 2009, compared with a loss of €4.8 billion in the same period in 2008. Net revenue for the quarter was ¤5.5 billion. For the full year, the bank reported a net profit of €5 billion, after a loss of €3.8 billion for 2008.