David Solomon and Stephanie Cohen

“There’s no question 2021 was an extraordinary year,” David Solomon said in his annual letter to Goldman Sachs’ shareholders. 

The Wall Street giant achieved $15 billion of commercial real estate originations in 2021, compared with $12.5 billion for 2020, and just over $14 billion in 2019. The 2021 figure includes $12.6 billion of single-asset, single-borrower commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) deals and $2.4 billion in conduit CMBS transactions. 

In the past year, Goldman focused mostly on large syndicated balance sheet loans, bridge to securitizations and on-balance sheet CRE collateralized loan obligation products when the CMBS market was on a pause at the start of the pandemic. The shift positioned it to expand its balance sheet lending.

Advancing diversity and inclusion was also a top priority for Goldman Sachs in 2021. In July, the firm strengthened its board diversity requirement by announcing that the firm will underwrite IPOs for companies in Western Europe and the U.S. only if they have at least two diverse board members, at least one of whom must be a woman. 

Goldman, too, progressed on closing the opportunity gap through its investment and philanthropic efforts such as the One Million Black Women initiative — launched in March 2021, with the goal of investing $10 billion to improve the lives of at least
1 million Black women by 2030. 

In direct response to input received from nearly 20,000 Black women and girls, Goldman also announced two new programs, OMBW Black in Business, focused on Black women sole proprietors, and OMBW Black Women Impact Grants, focused on access to multiyear funding for Black female nonprofit leaders. 

Goldman’s Urban Investment Group (UIG) committed more than $3.9 billion of capital in 2021, up from $1.9 billion in 2020. Sherry Wang and Daniel Alger took over UIG in February 2021 looking to build on the more than 11.2 million square feet of real estate commitments the group made over the last two decades in predominantly minority communities. 

“Since Goldman Sachs announced its One Million Black Women initiative one year ago, the Urban Investment Group has committed over $700 million, laying the groundwork to narrow the opportunity gap for more than 50,000 Black women,” Wang said.