Type Subsidiary Website www.goldmansachs.com Founded 1986 Total assets 39.9 billion USD | Industry Private equity Headquarters New York City Number of employees 140 | |
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Products Leveraged buyout
Growth capital Parent organizations Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs Group, Investment Banking and Securities Investments Subsidiaries MedAvante, Inc., Viseon Energy, L.L.C. | ||
Goldman Sachs Capital Partners is the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs, focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments globally.
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The group, which is based in New York City, was founded in 1986. GS Capital Partners has raised approximately $39.9 billion since inception across seven funds and has invested over $17 billion. On April 23, 2007, Goldman closed GS Capital Partners VI with $20 billion in committed capital, $11 billion from institutional and high-net-worth investors and $9 billion from Goldman Sachs and its employees. GS Capital Partners VI is the current primary investment vehicle for Goldman Sachs to make large, privately negotiated equity investments.
History
Goldman Sachs has historically invested capital in a variety of businesses alongside its investment banking clients. In the early and mid-1980s, Goldman was a slow entrant into the financing of leveraged buyouts and junk bonds and preferred to focus on its traditional mergers and acquisitions advisory business. Beginning in 1983, however, Goldman began making longer-term equity investments in private equity transactions that came through its investment banking and other clients.
Goldman Sachs Capital Partners was founded in 1986, at the same time that similar groups were founded at other investment banks including Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking, Morgan Stanley Capital Partners and DLJ Merchant Banking Partners. Goldman established investment partnerships that allowed its clients to participate alongside the firm in private equity transactions.
Investment funds
Since 1992, GSCP has raised third party capital as well as investing on behalf of Goldman, its clients and its employees through institutional private equity funds. GSCP's third party investors include pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, fund of funds, high-net-worth individuals, sovereign wealth funds and other institutional investors.
As of the end of 2008, GSCP had completed fundraising for seven investment funds with total committed capital of approximately US$39.9 billion:
Source: Preqin
Investments
GS Capital Partners emerged in the late 1990s as one of the largest private equity investors globally competing and partnering with the largest independent firms, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Blackstone Group, Bain Capital, Carlyle Group and TPG Capital. Since the raising of its Goldman Sachs Capital Partners 2000 Fund, GS Capital Partners has completed some of the most notable leveraged buyouts:
In addition to its successful buyout transactions, Goldman was involved in the high-profile failed buyout of Harman International Industries (NYSE: HAR), an upscale audio equipment maker. On April 26, 2007, Harman announced it had entered an agreement to be acquired by GS Capital Partners and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. As the financing markets became more adverse in the summer of 2007, the buyout was on tenuous ground. In September 2007, Goldman and KKR backed out of the $8 billion buyout of Harman. By the end of the day, Harman's shares had plummeted by more than 24% on the news.
As of February 2013, Energy Future Holdings Corporation has been described as "struggling" which resulted in the April 29, 2014 filing for bankruptcy protection under Title 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code[1].