While the firm doesn’t provide details of the funds’ performance, bankers who have participated said that previous employee funds have performed well, in some cases more than doubling the amount invested.
Blankfein, 60, has received $173.4 million from employee funds in the past 12 years. Palm and Cohn also have received more than $100 million of distributions. Goldman Sachs doesn’t disclose how much of that is profit and how much return of invested capital.
The return to employee-only funds eliminates one added bonus from the previous structure: Bankers who invested in the earlier funds also received a share of the fees that the firm charges outside clients. Blankfein and Palm, the two largest investors in employee funds among the firm’s officers, have received more than $9 million of such gains since 2008.
T2 Biosystems
The recent funds have made several profitable investments.
Bridge Street 2011 funds were involved in a buyout that year by Goldman Sachs and Warburg Pincus LLC of Endurance International Group Holdings Inc., one of the world’s largest website-hosting companies. Burlington, Massachusetts-based Endurance went public last year, and the stake held by Bridge Street funds has gained more than 40 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
In March 2013, that year’s Bridge Street fund made a preferred investment alongside Goldman Sachs in Lexington, Massachusetts-based T2 Biosystems Inc., a maker of diagnostic instruments for detection of infectious diseases. Seventeen months later, Goldman Sachs and Bridge Street bought more stock in T2’s IPO. The fund’s total investment of $4.34 million has increased more than 50 percent in value, based on yesterday’s closing price.
Bridge Street funds also own preferred shares in iKang Healthcare Group Inc., a Beijing-based company that provides health-care services to corporations, and have stakes in credit- reporting company TransUnion Corp., Indian cable-television operator DEN Networks Ltd. and Interline Brands Inc., which sells plumbing and air conditioning products.
“Historically these kinds of funds have done well,” said Johnson, the pay consultant. “And even when they haven’t done well, people kind of sucked it up and didn’t complain.”