The encyclopedia · Finance & Accounting · Financial decision · 2021–2024
Goldman bought GreenSky for $2.2B to chase consumer banking, then sold it for ~$500M
Goldman bought the home-improvement lender in 2022 for $1.73B to build out Marcus. Two years later it sold GreenSky for about $500M and took a $504M write-down.
Goldman Sachs · 2023-10-11
What happened
Goldman Sachs agreed in September 2021 to pay $2.24 billion for GreenSky, the largest buy-now-pay-later platform for home-improvement loans, to push its Marcus consumer bank into everyday lending beyond its core of investment banking and trading. The deal closed in March 2022 at $1.73 billion after the shares fell. GreenSky's network of more than 10,000 merchants was meant to give Marcus a mass consumer channel.
The bet soured quickly. Goldman's consumer business, which was burning money, lost its strategic standing inside the firm as executives refocused on the investment bank. In July 2023 Goldman disclosed a $504 million write-down on GreenSky, and in April 2023 its CEO said Goldman 'may not be the best long-term holder' of the fintech. Bids for the business came in far below what the bank hoped.
On 11 October 2023 Goldman agreed to sell GreenSky to a consortium led by private-equity firm Sixth Street, with KKR, Bayview and CardWorks, for about $500 million — roughly a third of what it had paid. The sale closed on 15 March 2024. Goldman took a $0.19-per-share hit to its Q3 2023 earnings from the disposal, and the whole detour cost it over a billion dollars between the lower sale price and the write-downs.
Why it happened
- Buying a consumer platform to grow a retail bank only works if the parent keeps funding the losses; when priorities shift, the acquisition is carried at a value nobody else will pay.
- An acquisition price is a guess about the future, and the write-down is the correction arriving early — the $504M GreenSky charge came just over a year after the deal closed.
- Once the strategic rationale evaporates, a business tied to one parent's balance sheet has few buyers, so the sale price collapses toward the value of its loans rather than its potential.
The lesson
An acquisition only makes sense while the parent keeps paying for it. Goldman bought GreenSky to build a consumer bank, then changed its mind and sold it for about a third of the price.
Sources
- Goldman Sachs — Goldman Sachs Announces Sale of GreenSky to Sixth Street-led Consortium, 11 Oct 2023
- CNBC — Goldman Sachs is acquiring buy-now-pay-later fintech GreenSky for $2.2 billion, 15 Sep 2021
- Banking Dive — Goldman to sell GreenSky to Sixth Street-led group for about $500M, Oct 2023
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