Clockwise from top left: Miriam Wheeler, Siddharth Shrivastava, Tim Richards, and Steven Pack.
Miriam Wheeler, Siddharth Shrivastava, Steven Pack and Tim Richards
Global head of real estate financing; co-head of SASB and balance sheet originations; co-head of SASB and balance sheet originations; and co-head of conduit originations at Goldman Sachs
Last year's rank: 13
Goldman Sachs largely held serve with originations in 2023, despite confronting less-than-ideal lending conditions.
The Wall Street giant finished the year with $6 billion in loan volume to come close to matching its 2022 total of $6.8 billion. It solidified itself as the top CMBS SASB originator, comprising 23.7 percent of market share, and originated more than $1.4 billion of fixed-rate conduit financings during 2023.
“I think that our platform really excels in times where the market is more complicated, and last year was definitely an example of that,” said Miriam Wheeler. “When things get really tricky and challenging, we are able to really draw on the resources from across the firm and come up with great solutions for our clients.”
A big highlight for Goldman Sachs on the deal front involved leading a $1.185 billion SASB CMBS transaction secured by a portfolio of Amazon-leased industrial properties across 10 states. Triple A-rated bonds on the deal priced at 145 over SOFR, which Goldman Sachs said marks the tightest level for a SASB trade since the first quarter of 2022.
Another large CMBS deal on which Goldman Sachs took the lead with a 65 percent share involved a $1 billion CMBS loan to refinance its 8.5 million-square-foot portfolio backed by open-air retail assets owned by Washington Prime Group. The transaction, which marked the first CMBS deal for the sponsor, retired a bankruptcy exit term loan and marked the largest retail loan of 2023.
Wheeler said the transaction for Washington Prime Group — the portfolio company for Strategic Value Partners — followed two years of work on it. “We found the right moment in time to bring it to market and the right collateral pool,” Wheeler said. “We used not only our sales team who focus on commercial mortgages, but some of our corporate clients participated as well.”
While Goldman Sachs was active with all major property sectors, 2023 was dominated by retail and hospitality financings. Wheeler said both asset classes have benefited from post-COVID tailwinds that are helping to grow cash flow and drive new transactions even in a high-coupon environment.
Goldman Sachs was involved with $2.2 billion of retail CMBS deals, a 24.8 percent market share and 73 percent share of the retail SASB market. The bank has also been active in data center deals for CMBS and balance sheet lending, buoyed by a recent boom in AI technology.
In addition to lending across different sectors throughout the challenging times in 2023, Wheeler said educating borrowers and investors about market conditions took on even greater importance. “What we found is that if you had a refinancing you needed to get done, where you had a medium-term view where you got ready early and waited for a good window in the market, that made a big difference,” Wheeler said. “We spent a lot of time with our clients who wanted to do CMBS deals getting ready early, doing a bunch of pre-work, and then finding periods with more liquidity to execute deals and then really being thoughtful around marketing plans and what would work in the market.”
