Ticker Talk

* Goldman Sachs Group plans to raise as much as $3.8 billion in a share sale early next month, a move that would transform the 130-year-old private investment bank into the fourth-biggest U.S. securities firm by stock market worth. As many as 69 million shares, or 14.8% of the firm, will be sold for between $45 and $55 each, Goldman told the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday.

It had planned to sell shares between $40 and $50, but it raised the price because stocks of brokerage firms have rallied amid forecasts for higher earnings. The partnership also announced the launch of GS-Online, an Internet-based service for underwriting stocks over the World Wide Web.

* The New York Stock Exchange wants to form an alliance soon with Reuters Group’s Instinet and three other electronic networks to trade securities listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market and American Stock Exchange, NYSE Chairman Richard Grasso said Monday. The deal, which the NYSE wants to complete in the next few months, would make it possible for institutional investors such as Fidelity Investments and the Vanguard Group to use the Big Board as “a platform” to buy and sell non-NYSE stocks, such as Nasdaq-listed Microsoft and Intel, Grasso said.

* Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Monday that he is having trouble finding value in the U.S. stock market. “The general level of the stock market does not offer much opportunity to buy things at prices that we consider appropriate,” Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, said at a news conference in London. “I do sit on cash when those circumstances come about.” Buffett said he would like to make a $10-billion to $12-billion acquisition because Berkshire has gotten so big that only a large acquisition will make a difference in the holding company’s performance. He added that he remains bullish on Coca-Cola and Gillette, two of his longtime favorites.