Awards

Commercial Observer - Power Finance 2025

17 June 2025 | 2 minute read
Awards

Commercial Observer - Power Finance 2025

17 June 2025 | 2 minute read
Awards

Commercial Observer - Power Finance 2025

17 June 2025 | 2 minute read

Goldman Sachs seized on improving lending conditions in 2024, more than doubling its 2023 volume.

The Wall Street giant executed $13.2 billion of securitized volume for the year compared with $6 billion in 2023 aided by some large-scale CMBS transactions as spread tightening and more clarity on interest rates came into motion. The improving market environment was evident with Goldman Sachs’ fixed-rate conduit financing business, which nearly doubled from the previous year to around $3 billion.

ā€œRates dropping and spreads compression led people to get more confident with blocking in fixed-term financing for a five-year period,ā€ Timothy Richards said. ā€œThe mentality shift in our clients got them to be more comfortable with refinancing, and you saw more appetite from the bond buyers as well, which led to spread compression across theĀ  board.ā€

An active year on the CMBS front for Goldman Sachs was highlighted by leading a $1.4 billion single-borrower BXĀ  2024-VLT4 refinance deal in May 2024 securitized by three Blackstone-ownedĀ  data center assets. It marked the largest data center loan for 2024, and received strong investor demand a year after initially pricing in less favorable market conditions.

ā€œWhen Blackstone saw a window to refinance the deal at a tighter spread, they decided to tap us to do it,ā€ Sid ShrivastavaĀ  said. ā€œYou also had the tailwinds of theĀ  investor demands with the sector being a lot more robust than it had been historically, and that’s ultimately what resulted in the deal getting done at a very efficientĀ  level.ā€

Goldman Sachs also co-led a $975 million CMBS deal with J.P. Morgan Chase to refinance the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel in December 2024, which marked the tightest floating-rate AAA- rated transaction in the hospitality sectorĀ  since 2022.

Goldman Sachs’ alternatives business also had a big year, raising $7 billion in May for its fourth high-yields credit fund called Real Estate Credit Partners IV. The fund deployed over the last year just under $1 billion of the capital raised.

ā€œThere’s a huge maturity wall that we all see coming, and the need for size and certainty of execution we think plays really well into our strengths of this fourth fund,ā€ said Andrew White, who oversees the fund. ā€œWe think there’s a large secular shift around liquidity in the alternative space and being in front of the markets in scale.ā€