“ their whole company is based on trust. The cost of losing it would be huge, so they’d be super driven to stamp it out.”
This was the exact argument put forth by defenders of Goldman Sachs when it was alleged they were screwing over their own customers in the financial crisis.
On the other hand, now people don't trust them and their stock is below where it was in 2007, compared to the market index which is at more than double that.
You could argue that it's because Goldman destroyed the public trust in the entire industry. How many people who used to just blindly give their money to investment banks are now paying enough attention to their performance relative to index ETFs to find them lacking?
This was the exact argument put forth by defenders of Goldman Sachs when it was alleged they were screwing over their own customers in the financial crisis.