NEW YORK (US) – In a bid to support its consumer banking unit Marcus, Goldman Sachs Group Inc is mulling takeovers. This comes after the Wall Street firm slowed loan and deposit growth at its fledgling business in 2020 when the pandemic broke out.
For any deal to be large and transformational, the management of Goldman has put an “extremely high” bar, said sources. One of them said the financial institution had M&A bankers crunching numbers on “different ideas.”
One such area of interest is digital banking. Because of the coronavirus outbreak, the management’s belief that online activity will be central to growth and branches will have a diminished role has been strengthened.
As a result, executives are ruling out any sort of agreements that involve acquiring branches. A source said that digital businesses that bring in new customers or unique technologies would be an attractive option for the bank.
Marcus is named after one of the founders of the bank and it is an important plank of Chief Executive David Solomon’s plan to minimise the bank’s reliance on volatile trading and investment banking revenues. In order to do so, Solomon wants to have businesses with revenues that are predictable such as consumer banking and mass-market wealth management.
When the financial institution reports its Q-4 results on Tuesday, it is expected to say that loan growth at its consumer business, including Marcus and a credit card venture with Apple, has been sluggish than expected, said sources.
