Goldman Sachs Group is expanding its private equity offering to wealthy individuals across Wall Street and beyond, in the latest sign of investment firms gradually broadening access to the much sought-after private markets.
The New York-based investment bank is launching an open-ended private equity fund named G-PE, which will offer access to deals from its buyout, growth, secondary and co-investment strategies, according to a statement Wednesday.
“As more companies opt to stay private for longer and a greater share of economic growth occurs in private markets, investors will need to look beyond the public markets,” Kristin Olson, global head of alternatives for wealth at Goldman, said in the statement.
Goldman’s offering aims to challenge larger private-market rivals like Apollo Global Management, Blackstone Inc. and KKR & Co., who are all seeking to grow their assets by going after cash from both wealthy individual investors and institutions. In his annual newsletter earlier this week, BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink pledged to open up private markets to millions of everyday investors.
Greater inflows into its asset and wealth management arm are helping Goldman increasingly compete with these alternative asset management giants as well as its traditional banking peers.
The bank is leaning into a “G-Series” branding, which will apply to its suite of funds in infrastructure, real estate and private credit. The funds draw money from clients through wealth brokers and private banks, including the one operated by Goldman.
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More broadly, Goldman is planning to grow the volume of alternative investments it distributes through third-party wealth platforms to US$8 billion ($10.74 billion) this year, up from about US$5 billion last year, a person familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing non-public information.
Over the next year, the bank also plans to nearly triple the headcount in its asset-management unit that distributes its investments to individual investors, lifting it to about 60 people around the world, the person added.
