“It seems investors in some ways are in a similar type of wait-and-see mode,” he said.

The one place investors can find a stated target is in the bank’s annual proxy filing, where it lays out what executives must achieve to earn long-term performance bonuses. Half of those awards, which have been set at a total of $15 million for Blankfein over the past three years, are based on the firm’s return on equity in a three-year period. The other half is based on increasing book value per share.

‘Very Negative’

The board set targets that award the full amount if the firm earns a 10 percent return, company filings show. The award rises as returns climb above 10 percent and tops out at 1.5 times the stated value if they reach 15 percent. The first awards were set to pay out based on performance ending in 2013 until the board decided in December 2012 to extend the period another five years, according to a regulatory filing.

While 10 percent is a fine short-term target, the market reaction would be “very negative” if Goldman Sachs made that its long-term goal, said Charles Peabody, an analyst at Portales Partners LLC in New York. Investors expect a minimum of 15 percent as the firm’s long-term aspiration, he said.

“I’d be shocked if they publicly accepted” 10 percent, Peabody said. “I can understand them saying that for bonus purposes, because everyone sets their hurdles at rates that ensure compensation of some magnitude, but I can’t imagine shareholders would accept that as a reasonable return.”

Goldman Sachs’s minimum of 10 percent return on equity to pay executives the full amount of their bonuses puts the firm in line with Morgan Stanley, which has made that its target both for shareholders and bonus calculations. Morgan Stanley pays 1.5 times the bonus with any return on equity of 12 percent or more, a lower threshold than at Goldman Sachs.

JPMorgan Target

Other banks set thresholds for executive bonuses at lower levels than their public targets. Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup calculate bonuses based on return-on-asset targets. The equivalent returns on tangible equity, based on the firms’ latest asset-to-equity ratios, were about 11.8 percent and 9.8 percent, respectively, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Bank of America posted a return on tangible equity of 6.4 percent in the first nine months of 2013, less than half the 14 percent goal set by the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank. JPMorgan targets a 16 percent return on tangible equity for the firm, while Citigroup maintains a 10 percent goal.