Old school banks are catching on with the times as investment banking titan, Goldman Sachs (GS), recently locked in its intent to purchase FinTech lending platform GreenSky (GSKY) for $2.2b. Since GreenSky’s publicly-traded, Goldman will be buying its shares at an almost 50% premium. GreenSky's stock has been up by 40% over the past five days.
Goldman’s acquisition comes as its second in the space of a month with its asset management arm taking on NN Investment Partners (a subsidiary of a Dutch insurance company) for almost $1.9b last month. But GreenSky is different as it becomes the second-largest since 2018 and a tie-in to Goldman’s venture into consumer banking.
Why it matters
The company launched a retail banking division, Marcus, five years ago targeting individual customers, while it’s also been partnering with companies like Apple (APPL) to launch products like credit cards. GreenSky’s platform, which acts as a match-up service between banks and borrowers, gives Goldman the opportunity to start flexing its consumer banking muscles and building it into Marcus.
