July 13 (Bloomberg) -- Meredith Whitney gave Goldman Sachs Group Inc. her only “buy” recommendation among the eight banks she covers, saying the shares may climb 30 percent.

Whitney, the founder of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group LLC, hasn’t recommended buying shares of New York-based Goldman Sachs since January 2008, when she was an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. The stock may reach $186 from $141.87 on July 10, the 39- year-old analyst said in a note to clients today.

Goldman Sachs shed government-imposed restrictions on compensation by repaying $10 billion of bailout money to the U.S. Treasury in June. The firm, which has ratcheted up trading gains and reaped more fees from stock and bond sales, may report the highest per-share profit of any of the 15 biggest U.S. banks, according to analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Goldman Sachs, which plans to release second-quarter results tomorrow, is going to post “enormous” revenue from its fixed-income, currencies and commodities business, Whitney said in an interview on CNBC. “Goldman is going to surprise big on the upside,” she said.

The shares climbed $7.57, or 5.3 percent, to $149.44 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. They have gained 77 percent this year.

Whitney, who left Oppenheimer in February to create her own firm, correctly predicted in 2007 that Citigroup Inc. would cut its dividend. Her call triggered the steepest drop in Citigroup shares since September 2002.

Earnings Record

Goldman Sachs may post the largest profit since it set an earnings record in 2007, according to the Bloomberg survey. The company will probably say it earned $2.17 billion, or $3.65 a share, based on the average estimate of 25 analysts.

The firm managed $27.9 billion of global equity and equity- linked offerings in the quarter, up from $1.5 billion in the first quarter, and $3.98 billion of high-yield debt sales, compared with $798 million in the first quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The collapse of rivals including Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. may help Goldman Sachs beat its 2007 trading-revenue record, Bank of America Corp. analyst Guy Moszkowski said July 9. He raised his rating on the stock to “buy” from “neutral” and predicted second-quarter earnings will be higher than analysts expect.

The company showed its ability to rebound from the global credit crisis in the first quarter, when it reported a record $6.56 billion in revenue from trading fixed-income, currencies and commodities, 34 percent more than its previous high. New York-based Morgan Stanley, which had promised to scale back risks in areas such as proprietary trading, was left behind with $1.3 billion of fixed-income revenue.

Goldman Sachs has “unmatched risk-taking/risk-management skills in a market that strongly rewards these because of a decline in competitor risk appetite,” Moszkowski wrote in a note to investors.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup and Bank of America are also scheduled to report earnings this week.

To contact the reporters on this story: Josh Fineman in New York at jfineman@bloomberg.net; Ambereen Choudhury in London at achoudhury@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 13, 2009 16:26 EDT