(Reuters) - The change to a bank holding company model will prove costly for former investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley , an analyst at Bernstein Research said.
The regulators will force the two companies to employ less leverage, maintain more liquidity, limit illiquid business commitments and tightly control counterparty risk, analyst Brad Hintz said.
"The Federal Reserve is a more intrusive regulator than the Securities and Exchange Commission and establishing the commercial bank infrastructure to report to the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the New York State Bank authorities will be costly," he said.
Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley became bank holding companies regulated by the U.S. Federal Reserve in September, after Lehman Brothers
Hintz rates Goldman Sachs "market-perform" and Morgan Stanley "outperform."
Separately, in a research note dated December 1, Credit Suisse forecast a quarterly loss of $4 a share for Goldman Sachs, reflecting cost of asset-price declines, less investment banking and lower asset levels in prime brokerage and asset management.
Over the past few weeks, several analysts at brokerages including Fox-Pitt Kelton and UBS have forecast Goldman will post a fourth-quarter loss, the first ever since going public in 1999.
Credit Suisse analyst Susan Roth Katzke, who rates Goldman "outperform" slashed her price target on the stock to $140 from an earlier range of $175 to $200.
Shares of Goldman Sachs closed at $65.76 Monday on the New York stock Exchange, while those of Morgan Stanley closed at $11.35.
(Reporting by Anurag Kotoky in Bangalore; Editing by Vinu Pilakkott)