As the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Tuesday (Sept. 19), the Wall Street bank is in discussions to sell GreenSky to a group of firms that include Sixth Street, Pacific Investment Management and KKR as it moves further away from consumer lending.
The report, citing sources familiar with the matter, said a deal would be worth around $500 million, a sharp drop from the $1.7 billion Goldman paid for GreenSky in 2021. A separate report by the Financial Times — again, citing unnamed sources — says the bank hopes to conclude the sale before it reports its earings Oct. 17.
A spokesperson for Goldman Sachs declined to comment when reached by PYMNTS.
The report says the sale process drew bids from a number of private equity firms and financial services firms, and that Goldman is now in exclusive talks with the Sixth Street group.
Last month saw reports that the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered FinTech Pagaya and private equity investor General Atlantic were also interested in purchasing GreenSky, offering up to $800 million for the lender.
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Founded in 2006, GreenSky offers loans for home improvement projects. At the time of the acquisition, Goldman said the purchase would help it bolster its Marcus by Goldman Sachs banking platform.
“We have been clear in our aspiration for Marcus to become the consumer banking platform of the future, and the acquisition of GreenSky advances this goal,” Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO David M. Solomon said in the announcement.
But Goldman’s retail banking push has now been scaled back, PYMNTS wrote last month.
“Marcus has not been the digital bank that Goldman Sachs had hoped to create, where the company booked a $470 million loss on the partial sale of its book of Marcus loans this past spring,” the report said.
Goldman Sachs has been of late refocusing its efforts on traditional investment banking and market-driven operations. On an earnings call in July, Solomon said the capital markets climate has picked up a bit compared to earlier in the year.
And as noted here last week, the bank has apparently launched a “sports franchise” unit within its investment banking division, designed to offer wealthy clients the chance to invest in sports teams, combining sports mergers and acquisitions with sports financing.
