By Saeed Azhar and Niket Nishant
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Goldman Sachs would consider acquisitions in asset and wealth management, but would be highly selective about any deal, CEO David Solomon said on Tuesday.
“If we could find things that could accelerate our asset and wealth management journey, we would consider them,” he told the UBS financial services conference in Miami. “But the bar to do significant things is very, very high.”
Goldman Sachs has sold assets as Solomon pulled back from a consumer business that lost billions of dollars.
The Wall Street powerhouse has since shifted its focus back to traditional mainstays of investment banking and trading, while pushing growth in asset and wealth management.
Solomon also said he expects President Donald Trump’s administration to run a more growth-oriented agenda, but the direction of policy is a little bit more complicated.
“The regulatory environment should be a constructive tailwind, but the broad policy landscape is still uncertain,” he said.
“There’s a lot of policy that is shifting and until we have more certainty on that policy, that’s going to create a little bit of volatility.”
Announcements on tariffs have whipsawed markets in recent weeks as investors try to wrap their heads around Trump’s economic policies.
Goldman Sachs beat estimates in the fourth quarter, earning its biggest profit in more than three years as investment bankers brought in more deal fees and traders benefited from active markets. Net income climbed to $4.11 billion in the fourth quarter.
Solomon was awarded an $80 million stock bonus to stay at the helm for another five years, a stark turnaround for a leader whose survival was questioned after the ill-fated foray into retail banking.
(Reporting by Saeed Azhar and Niket Nishant, editing by Lananh Nguyen)
