Goldman Nears Deal to Sell Greensky to Sixth Street Group

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is in advanced talks to sell its GreenSky unit to a consortium that includes Sixth Street Partners, according to people familiar with the matter.

(Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is in advanced talks to sell its GreenSky unit to a consortium that includes Sixth Street Partners, according to people familiar with the matter.

No final decision has been made and discussions could fall through, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. The group also includes KKR & Co. and Bayview Asset Management, said the people.

The sale of the installment-lending platform Goldman bought less than two years ago is part of a broader retreat from consumer lending after the Wall Street giant’s attempts to woo retail customers proved costlier than expected. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon had planned to broaden the firm’s reach beyond a traditional focus on ultra-wealthy individuals, but said the firm pushed too quickly into the effort.

Representatives for Goldman Sachs, Sixth Street and KKR declined to comment. A spokesperson for Bayview didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The deal with the Sixth Street group, which also includes Pacific Investment Management Co., would be worth about $500 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The bank had been in talks with several groups on the potential deal, including one that featured Apollo Global Management Inc. and another that included Pagaya Technologies Ltd., Bloomberg reported last month.

Goldman reached a deal to buy GreenSky for about $2.24 billion in 2021, a price that decreased to about $1.7 billion before the all-stock transaction was completed in early 2022. The move was meant to give Goldman the largest fintech platform for home improvement consumer loan originations, adding to its offerings of savings accounts and credit cards.

The firm said it booked a $504 million writedown on goodwill in the second quarter as it prepared to sell the unit. The division that houses the firm’s consumer unit had a pretax loss of $1.18 billion in the first half of the year, bringing its total pretax losses to $5 billion since the start of 2020.

The Wall Street giant previously agreed to sell personal loans tied to its Marcus consumer unit to Varde Partners and Rithm Capital Corp.

–With assistance from Sridhar Natarajan.

(Adds details on losses in penultimate paragraph.)

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