Goldman Sachs Chief Executive David Solomon told attendees at a UBS financial services conference in Florida that financial sponsors - such as private equity firms - are poised to increase transaction activity as they confront the need to return capital to investors before launching new fundraising rounds.
"With respect to sponsors, we’ve all kind of been waiting impatiently for that to accelerate. I think we’re reaching a point where it’s accelerating," Solomon said, stressing that these sponsors face pressure to provide liquidity back to their limited partners before pursuing further capital raises. That dynamic, he said, is shifting priorities for sellers, with valuations for assets they wish to divest becoming less central.
Solomon explained that whether financial sponsors turn to merger-and-acquisition markets or public listings, the imperative is the same - to return more capital to investors. "Whether they’re going to the M&A market or they’re getting stuff public, they’ve got to return more capital," he said.
On the corporate side, the Goldman chief executive characterized strategic M&A led by companies as set to be "meaningfully higher" than the average over the prior five years, and he expressed confidence that there was little to derail that trend for strategic transactions.
Goldman Sachs itself closed out a robust 2025 after it surpassed Wall Street expectations for fourth-quarter earnings reported in January, a result the firm attributed to a surge in both dealmaking and trading activity.
In 2025 Goldman advised on several large, headline transactions. Those included the $55 billion leveraged buyout of Electronic Arts and Alphabet’s $32 billion purchase of cloud security firm Wiz. The volume of deals the bank advised on helped it reclaim the top spot in global M&A for 2025, with Goldman advising on $1.48 trillion in total deal volume and generating $4.6 billion in fees.
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