Goldman Sachs Group aims to offload a portion of its stake in a $3.1 billion credit line to SoftBank Group Corp's Vision Fund which it helped arrange.
The U.S. lender has approached other financial institutions to take on some of its lending commitment to decrease its risk, according to «Bloomberg» (behind paywall), quoting people with knowledge of the matter.
The bridge facility involved, which Goldman and Mizuho International began arranging last year, enables the famous investment vehicle to quickly decide on transactions. The loan was syndicated to other banks including Standard Chartered, Citigroup, Barclays and Royal Bank of Canada, according to a SoftBank presentation in May.
Cutting Exposure In Recent Months
Goldman has been looking to cut its exposure to the facility for the last few months, one of the people said to the media outlet. Goldman is offering the debt at prices slightly below par, and also sell the credit line in pieces as small as $50 million, according to Bloomberg's sources.
In May, Goldman already reduced its exposure by bringing on board additional lenders. Now, the firm is looking beyond the existing group, and at least one of the original 10 lenders isn't interested in boosting its exposure, one of the people said.
Softbank's Setback
Bad news has been plaguing SoftBank this week, from the stalled initial public offering of WeWork(one of its biggest bets) to doubts over the sale of its debt-laden Sprint. The cost to protect against nonpayment by SoftBank in the credit-default swaps market jumped on Wednesday, according to ICE Data Services.
Goldman Sachs has deep ties to SoftBank, working with the company to raise a second Vision Fund and advising founder Masayoshi Son's businesses on several deals in recent years. SoftBank's first Vision Fund, which counts Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund as its largest investor, has backed firms including messaging software company Slack, ride-hailing giant Uber and office-sharing startup WeWork.
