Goldman Sachs and SDG's

Over the course of the last few weeks, we discussed Goldman Sachs role in helping the UN meet their sustainability development goals. This blog focused on information about Goldman Sachs that came to light between January and March of 2023. The first post focused on tokenized green bonds that the Peoples Republic of China offered using Goldman Sachs tokenization platform in February. As the bonds were only issued a little over a month ago it is impossible to evaluate their impact on the UN’s SDGs. The issuance of the bonds however has been incredibly successful and marks an important milestone in the world of finance, proving that the legal and regulatory framework is supportive and flexible enough for tokenized bonds (at least in Hong Kong). The chief executive of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority is set to release white paper in the near future which will detail the development of this bond and the next steps for this new product (Yue, 2023) . The second discussed the Inflation Re...

Early last month Goldman Sachs released a survey looking at the systematic barriers that small black business owners are facing across the US. This survey highlighted the unique challenges that black business owners face, detailing that 37% of black business owners find it difficult to access new capital or funding, in comparison to 23% of overall small business owners. They also noted that 45% of black small business owners have had to use their personal savings in the last 3 months to keep their business afloat, in contrast to 33% of overall small business owners (Goldman Sachs, 2023) . It appears that the figures for all small business owners also includes black small business owners, it is likely that this has skewed the statistics and the gap between the two is actually much larger. This report was done in conjunction with Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business voices. How is Goldman Sachs Breaking Systemic Barriers to Funding? A report by Goldman Sachs (2022), discussed how “entrepr...

Goldman Sachs has rightfully been making headlines over the last few days after holding its second ever investor day. During the investor day shareholders queried what Goldman Sachs plan was for their consumer bank Marcus in their “platform-solutions business” divisions, which made a loss of $1.7bn in 2022. Solomon’s Goldman Sachs CEO brushed over the question saying “But I can’t answer that question” leaving shareholders underwhelmed and none the wiser (The Economist, 2023) . This blog post will discuss Goldman Sachs platform solution business, how it could have helped the UN with their SDGs and why it failed.  Goldman Sachs Consumer Bank, Marcus In late 2016, Goldman Sachs launched “Marcus by Goldman Sachs” named after founder Marcus Goldman, in an attempt to diversify their business operation due to the volatile nature of investment banking. Its goal was to provide consumers with a simple and transparent approach to consolidate their high interest credit card debit, and to app...

In recent weeks there has been a lot of talk surrounding the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). In this week's blog post we will discuss what the Act entails, what impacts it will have on Goldman Sachs and how it will aid the UN in meeting their Sustainability Development Goals (SDG). What is the Inflation Reduction Act? The Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in the US on August 16 th 2022 by President Biden. It has been deemed as one of the most significant actions that Congress has ever taken on green energy and climate change since its existence (Podest, 2023) . The main functions of the act are to heavily invest into great technologies, reduce the cost of prescriptions and increase taxes for corporations   (Smith, 2022) . Although it is named the Inflation Reduction Act, it is not likely that it will have much effect on inflation rates, it is more likely to cause a slight increase in inflation until 2024 but nonetheless it is still deemed to be an incredibly importan...

The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China announced the successful offering of HK$800 million of tokenized green bonds on Thursday (16 th  of February 2023). This is the first ever tokenized green bond issued by a government globally. This one-year tokenized green bond was distributed by a four-bank syndicate (Bank of China (Hong Kong), Crédit Agricole CIB, Goldman Sachs, HSBC) and will be leveraging Goldman Sachs tokenization platform GS DAP to increase efficiency and digitalisation across debt issuance  (Hong Kong Monetary Authority, 2023) . In this blog post will break down what green bonds are and how Goldman Sachs are using their tokenization platform to help facilitate green bonds. The economic benefits of green bonds and how they are aiding the UN in reaching their global sustainable development goals by their target of 2030.    So, what are Green Bonds? Green bonds have been increasing in popularity in rec...