Goldman Sachs to wave goodbye to GreenSky as proposed sale enters final stages
Goldman Sachs’ proposed sale of fintech lender GreenSky is reportedly entering its final stages, with bidders asked to place their best and final offers.
Goldman Sachs’ proposed sale of GreenSky continues
According to Bloomberg citing undisclosed sources, the US private equity company Apollo Global Management, investment firm Sixth Street and the AI fintech Pagaya Technologies are all actively engaged in the bidding process.
Bloomberg says Apollo has formed a bidding group with Blackstone, while Pagaya is said to have private equity investor General Atlantic as a bidding partner and is reportedly willing to pay up to $800 million for the Atlanta-based fintech.
Goldman Sachs’ journey with GreenSky began back in September 2021, when it acquired the fintech in an all-stock transaction valued at $2.24 billion – a far cry from the bids being put forward now.
At the time, the deal was viewed as largely beneficial to the bank’s consumer banking platform Marcus, with the bank’s CEO, David Soloman, stating that the deal “will allow Marcus to reach a new and active set of merchants and customers and provide them with an expanding set of solutions”.
However, Goldman Sachs folded its digital bank offering Marcus into its wider asset and wealth management division in October 2022 as the firm shifted its focus away from its retail banking proposition.
The bank has since been cutting ties with various elements of its costly consumer banking business, selling around $1 billion of its $4.5 billion loan portfolio in the first quarter of this year at a reported loss of $470 million.
This was succeeded by the additional sale of $1 billion-worth of personal loans to Varde Partners, an alternative investment firm, in July of this year.
Most recently, it sold its personal financial management (PFM) business to Creative Planning, a Kansas-headquartered wealth management firm, this week for an undisclosed sum, in a clear shift away from its consumer banking operations to pursue serving ultra-high-net-worth individuals.
