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Big banks sound and act a lot more like private equity.
The latest example came last week as Goldman Sachs (GS), one of Wall Street’s oldest and best-known investment banks, has repeatedly made it clear through actions and words that private markets play a critical role in its future growth, and even how top executives are compensated.
The payment component came on Friday when Goldman handed over CEO David Solomon a retention package $80 million to stay five more years and an $8 million increase for performance in 2024.
Part of that increase comes from Goldman’s board’s decision to introduce a retention tool long used by private equity giants: carried interest. Solomon and other executives can now get a share of the accumulated interest earned on private funds within Goldman’s wealth and asset management division.
The board did so after considering “the unique competitive threats to talent facing Goldman Sachs, including alternative management firms and others beyond the traditional banking industry,” the firm said in a filing.
Another reminder of the importance of private markets to Goldman came last Monday when it announced that it had combined several groups into a “Capital Solutions Group” which will seek to take advantage of Wall Street’s recent surge in so-called private credit, a reference to debt that is not publicly issued or traded.
Private credit is an ill-defined market that includes a variety of exotic lending activities. It has risen over the past decade due in large part to higher interest rates and regulation that forced banks to divest themselves of their own leveraged loans. Private equity firms have stepped in to fill this void by lending directly to businesses, thus competing with banks.
Solomon said during an analyst call Wednesday that Goldman’s new combined group positions it “to operate at the fulcrum of one of the most important structural trends taking place in finance, the emergence and growth of private credit and other asset classes that can be deployed privately.”
Goldman’s approach follows a series of alliances made last year between traditional banks and alternative asset managers who are also seeking bigger stakes in the $1.6 trillion private credit market.
A prominent private equity boss, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, has argued that public and private markets are converging. Both private and public assets come with risks and rewards, he told Yahoo Finance last November, with more companies choosing to go private than public. (Disclosure: Yahoo Finance is owned by Apollo Global Management.)
