Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is seeing “green shoots” in capital markets and a pick-up in deal flow later this year, the bank’s international head said.
“We got a number of IPOs in the market right now, but they’ve still got to price,” Goldman Sachs’s international head Richard Gnodde told Bloomberg TV in an interview in London. Some of this year’s debuts haven’t performed as well as hoped after listing, Gnodde said, “so we’ll have to watch that.”
Gnodde said both corporates and private equity firms were actively looking at securing mergers and acquisitions, but the discrepancy between buyers’ and sellers’ price expectations was still too wide at the moment. The executive said he expects these deals to potentially gather pace in “the back half” of 2023, adding that all parties will want to see where interest rates settle.
Gnodde’s comments echo Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser, who earlier this month said she saw some “green shoots” in investment banking. Firms across Wall Street are dusting themselves off from a tough year when business was derailed by weaker economic growth and geopolitical tensions. Many including Goldman Sachs are trimming jobs in response to the quieter conditions.
Read More: Goldman Flags 25% Drop in Trading Revenue as Job Cuts Loom
Goldman Sachs also sees private banking as a “key focus,” Gnodde said, including in Europe, where wealth giants UBS Group AG and Credit Suisse Group AG this week sealed their merger. “I’m sure we’ll be competing hard with them, and others, for talent and for clients,” he said.
Asked about Goldman Sachs’s prime-brokerage relationship with Odey Asset Management, Gnodde confirmed the bank was “in the process of moving away” from its client. The London-based investment company removed its founder Crispin Odey, who is facing fresh sexual assault allegations, from the firm’s partnership at the weekend.
