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Good morning from the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Today is Tuesday January 1st and this is your FT news briefing.

Happy New Year, I'm Amy Keene.

Today we'll be looking at the corporate year ahead.

The F.T.'s Tom Braithwaite is here to tell us what stories and companies he'll be following in 2019.

I think we were going into 2018 and quite a happy mood from the corporate perspective. In the US, we just had these massive tax cuts, the markets we can remember back then were roaring,

corporate profits were at a record level, US banks were starting to make money for the first time really after the crisis and the

tech wave was continuing with the companies racing to a trillion dollars in market capitalization

which was eventually won by Apple and

since then it's turned down a bit in mood and profitability and everything seems a lot more

shaky going into 2019.

And there are three big stories that we're following.

The first is Goldman. Goldman Sachs this year has really hit its most difficult period since the financial crisis.

Lloyd Blankfine after 12 years at the top has handed over to David Solomon, but the real problem

is it's got criminal investigations underway in Malaysia for its role in the 1MDB scandal.

Goldman was hired to arrange a 6.5 billion dollar bond sale for 1MDB,

which is this Malaysian State Investment Fund.

Goldman did quite well out of that deal.

It made more than $600 million in fees.

And a lot of the money went eventually into such things as producing the

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