Some thought it would never happen. But, after months of wrangling, Goldman Sachs has finally reached a landmark deal to rescue Cheyne Finance, the $7 billion British “structured investment vehicle” that went into receivership last September.

Under the agreement with Deloitte & Touche, the receivers, Goldman will sell a portion of Cheyne's holdings to establish the price of its mortgage-backed securities and other hard-to-value assets.

The assets will then go into a new vehicle, managed by Goldman, which will issue its own debt.

SIVs such as Cheyne were one of the first casualties of the credit crunch as investors that had been buying up debt in all manner of weird and wonderful entities suddenly lost their appetite for all but the very safest paper.

It is too soon to know how significant Goldman's rescue deal will turn out to be. It depends on Goldman persuading investors to put money back into such vehicles, which may not be easy, even for Goldman.

But if successful it could provide a blueprint that could be used to bail out what is left of the SIV sector, which owned $400 billion of assets at its peak last year. This would remove a big overhang of assets that has been blighting the credit markets and provide some firm prices that could help to unfreeze trading.

Goldman is thought to be working on similar deals with SIVs such as Golden Key, Mainsail, Whislejacket, formerly run by Standard Chartered, and Rhinebridge, managed by IKB Deutsche Industriebank, which collectively hold assets worth about $18 billion.

Some observers believe that this type of restructuring could be used with other troubled entities, such as collateralised debt obligations.

The news of the Cheyne deal came as Goldman provided further evidence of its remarkable resilience.

Goldman's writedowns on mortgage-related securities remain very modest compared with the other big Wall Street banks. In fact, it has actually made a profit overall from America's housing crisis.

In the second quarter, it underlined its confidence in its ability to navigate these turbulent times by taking on increased risk. Yet, despite Goldman's relatively upbeat comments, shares in its main rivals were marked down yesterday. Goldman is increasingly seen as in a class of its own.

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