Goldman Sachs 2015 Annual Report Download - page 7

Goldman Sachs 2015 Annual Report 5
our business to be global, broad and deep, and to focus
on delivering consistent returns over time. We believe
that our emphasis on providing the best possible advice,
products and services will help us outperform the
industry over time.
Executing on this strategy, we have experienced
significant growth in our business over the past several
years. We ended 2015 with a record $1.25 trillion in
assets under supervision, up from $895 billion at the
start of 2012. This growth has been the direct result
of robust net inflows, driven in part from market share
gains, as clients place increasing value on asset managers
like us that offer a broad array of products and services.
In 2015, our $53 billion in organic, long-term net inflows
outperformed our largest active management peers.
In some areas of asset management, we are still small
relative to the market leader. As we look ahead, this
means we see opportunity to grow substantially — both
by continuing to gain market share in our incumbent
businesses and by expanding into new ones.
Our growth in assets under supervision has also come
from new products and several strategic acquisitions.
We have launched a handful of new products that
have added more than $50 billion to our assets under
supervision over the past four years. Our Active Beta,
Unconstrained Fixed Income and Income Oriented
Strategies funds, for example, offer our clients compelling
new opportunities.
What’s more, eight acquisitions since the beginning
of 2012 have driven more than $70 billion in inflows.
These acquisitions have added important new capabilities,
filled gaps in our asset management offering and added
scale to our current business. For example, in 2015,
we acquired Imprint Capital Advisors, a dedicated
environmental, social and governance investment
advisor, strengthening our ability to help our clients
address these considerations in their portfolios.
Looking to build upon these efforts, we will continue
to evaluate targeted strategic acquisition opportunities
as they arise.
Impact Investing
Our firm is committed to fostering meaningful change
in the global economy, and in the communities in which
we live and work, both through our core businesses, and
by engaging in other activities that leverage our expertise
to promote economic progress. This means, among other
things, helping new enterprises succeed and grow by
investing in entrepreneurs, and helping to finance
different types of projects across the globe, such as those
that can improve living standards within traditionally
underserved communities. It also means being mindful
of the environment’s importance, not only to society as
a whole, but also to economic growth, and driving that
core belief through our work with our clients and within
the management of our own operations.
Urban Investment Group
We have a long history of innovative impact investing
through our Urban Investment Group (UIG). Since
2001, UIG has committed more than $4.9 billion to
underserved U.S. communities, facilitating the creation
and preservation of over 20,000 housing units — the
majority of which are affordable for low- to middle-
income families — as well as more than 1.9 million
square feet of community space and over 6 million
square feet of commercial, retail and industrial facilities.
We work with local stakeholders from the nonprofit,
for-profit and public sectors, focusing on community
and economic development. We have also been a pioneer
in the creation of “social impact bonds,” which are
financial instruments that leverage private investments
to support high-impact social programs. In fact, we
were involved in four of the eight social impact bond
financings that have been launched in the U.S.