NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Goldman Sachs’ move to buy San Francisco-based Imprint Capital has the small community of impact investment asset managers and dealmakers buzzing about who might next be asked to dance by a Wall Street suitor.

Goldman’s decision to buy, rather than build, its impact investing capacity for high-net-worth and institutional clients may prod other wealth-management giants to accelerate their own impact efforts through acquisitions. Some kind of impact investment proposition has become de rigueur for big banks and financial services providers, but a gap has remained between talk and action.

Goldman’s interest in Imprint could signal that the impact investing market has graduated from the white-papers-and-conferences stage to become a core part of the banks’ client-retention strategies and asset-management offerings. Imprint’s attraction was its ability to find and structure high-impact deals and funds that can clear due-diligence scrutiny.

“This is an indication that the big Wall Street banks think that this is a legitimate market,” says Matthew Weatherley-White, managing director of Caprock Group, which manages $3 billion in assets for approximately 70 wealthy families. “This gives Goldman the ability to diligence and place capital in impact deals.”