Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the Twitter Inc. IPO, said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. landed its lead role to run the sale of the online social networking and microblogging service company. Twitter would also be appointing other banks as it prepares itself for the IPO.

Golman Sachs has been losing out to other rivals, in particular Morgan Stanley, on lead roles for high-profile IPOs since 2009. The investment banking firm failed to secure the lead roles on IPOs of companies like Groupon Inc. and Zynga Inc. Goldman Sachs also did not snatch the lead role in Facebook Inc's USD160 sale in 2012.

Holland & Co. chairman Michael Holland, who oversees the over USD4 billion money managing firm, said that Twitter might have favored Goldman Sachs after criticism and complaints from shareholders were drawn from the past IPOs. According to data compiled by Groupon, Zynga and Facebook experienced a decline of over half in share value in the months following their sale. Facebook was able to recover losses from its IPO on August 2.

"The Facebook experience was one that was so egregious that Twitter did a fairly predictable thing. When the biggest and best have needed IPO services, Goldman is always a finalist."

Spokespeople for Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Twitter refused to comment.