Goldman Sachs helps large companies, governments, and wealthy individuals raise capital, trade securities, and grow their money — and gets paid through fees, trading margins, and management fees along the way, rather than through the deposit-and-loan spread a traditional bank runs on.
How Goldman Sachs makes money
Goldman Sachs helps large companies, governments, and wealthy individuals raise capital, trade securities, and manage their money — and gets paid through advisory and underwriting fees, trading margins, and management fees, rather than the deposit-taking, loan-making spread a traditional bank runs on.
Client fees, trading margins and management fees are Goldman's revenue directly — this isn't a bank earning money on the spread between what it pays depositors and what it charges borrowers; it earns money for intermediating and managing on clients' behalf. Source: 10-K FY2025, Item 1.
Where the revenue comes from
Revenue by segment — FY2025
Source: 10-K FY2025, p.74 (Segment Operating Results).
| Region | Revenue | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Americas | $36.5B | 63% |
| EMEA | $14.2B | 24% |
| Asia | $7.6B | 13% |
Global Banking & Markets grew from 64.9% of revenue in 2023 to 71.1% in 2025, while the once consumer-facing Platform Solutions business shrank from 4.4% to 0.3% — the result of exiting consumer lending (see the story piece for that history).
Source: 10-K FY2025, p.74, Note 25.
Customers and competitors
A classic B2B business. Individual clients are limited to ultra-high-net-worth private wealth accounts; everyone else is a corporation, government, or institutional investor. No single client dominates revenue, but advisory and underwriting fees are highly cyclical — they freeze up whenever the M&A and IPO markets do.
| Competitor | What's different |
|---|---|
| Morgan Stanley | Overlaps in investment banking and trading, but weighted more heavily toward retail wealth management and brokerage. |
| JPMorgan Chase | Competes directly in investment banking, but is a full-service bank with a large commercial-banking and consumer-finance business alongside it. |
| BlackRock | Competes in asset management, but has no trading or investment-banking business — it's purely an asset manager. |
The metric that matters most in this sector
For a securities firm, revenue and profit matter less than how efficiently the capital base was actually put to work — return on equity (ROE, net income over shareholders' equity) and the efficiency ratio (the share of revenue eaten by expenses, where lower is better).
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ROE | 23.0% | 10.2% | 7.5% | 12.7% | 15.0% |
| Efficiency ratio | 53.8% | 65.8% | 74.6% | 63.1% | 64.4% |
ROE hit 23% in the low-rate, high-trading-volume conditions of 2021, sank to as low as 7.5% during the 2022-2023 rate-hike and deal-drought period, then recovered to 15.0% by 2025. The efficiency ratio moved in the opposite direction throughout — together, the two show just how cyclical this business is.
Source: 10-K FY2025 p.64; 10-K FY2023, FY2022 Executive Overview sections.
Leadership and ownership
David Solomon (64) has been Chairman and CEO since October 2018, a 25-plus-year Goldman veteran; John Waldron is President and COO. There's no founding-family control — Goldman has been professionally managed since its 1999 IPO, and insider (officer + director) ownership is minimal (the CEO holds about 143,000 shares against roughly 295 million shares outstanding). The largest shareholders are index funds: Vanguard (9.68%), BlackRock (7.80%), State Street (6.65%).
Source: DEF 14A 2026, p.10 (directors), p.91 (beneficial ownership).
Capital returns
| 2023 | $10.50 |
| 2024 | $11.50 |
| 2025 | $14.00 |
| Q2 2026 (quarterly) | $5.00 |
The Q2 2026 quarterly dividend of $5.00 is up 25% year-over-year and 150% over five years — roughly a 2.0% annualized yield at the current price.
| 2022 | $3.50B |
| 2023 | $5.80B |
| 2025 | $12.36B |
| Q2 2026 | $4.00B |
Total shareholder returns (dividends plus buybacks) hit $16.78B in 2025. Basic share count has actually fallen, from 322M (2023) to 307M (2025) — buybacks have outpaced dilution from employee compensation, not just offset it.
Source: 10-K FY2025 p.64, p.209; 10-K FY2023 Executive Overview; Q2 FY2026 earnings call (Jul 14, 2026).
How this company could fail
- Market risk. 71% of revenue comes from advisory fees and trading, both of which freeze up together when markets seize (rate spikes, falling trading volumes). Net income fell more than 60% in 2022-2023.
- Liquidity and credit risk. The holding company depends on dividends and loans from its subsidiaries, so a credit-rating downgrade raises funding costs and can pressure liquidity quickly; falling short of regulatory capital ratios would also force a halt to dividends and buybacks.
- Regulatory and cyber risk. Goldman answers to regulators worldwide simultaneously, and an AI- or cyber-driven system outage or data breach would hit both trust and the business directly.
Source: 10-K FY2025, p.32 (Risk Factors summary).
Five-year financials
| 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net revenues | 59.34 | 47.37 | 46.25 | 53.51 | 58.28 |
| YoY growth | — | -20.2% | -2.4% | +15.7% | +8.9% |
| Net earnings | 21.64 | 11.26 | 8.52 | 14.28 | 17.18 |
| YoY growth | — | -48.0% | -24.3% | +67.6% | +20.3% |
| EPS ($) | 59.45 | 30.06 | 22.87 | 40.54 | 51.32 |
| ROE | 23.0% | 10.2% | 7.5% | 12.7% | 15.0% |
| Book value per share ($) | 284.55 | 303.55 | 313.56 | 336.77 | 357.60 |
Total assets grew from roughly $1.46T (2021) to $1.81T (2025), and the CET1 capital ratio (Standardized approach) has stayed comfortably above regulatory minimums (roughly 10.0-10.9%) throughout — 15.1% (2022) → 14.4% (2023) → 14.3% (2025) — while common and preferred equity have both grown steadily. Capital strength doesn't look like a concern here.
Source: 10-K FY2025 p.64, p.89; 10-K FY2023, FY2022 Executive Overview sections.
What we still don't know
- How much a downturn could cost the fast-growing private-credit book — Goldman raised $31B in new private-credit capital in Q2 2026 alone, but this asset class hasn't yet been tested through a real recession, so loss potential isn't something this data can size.
- How much of the current earnings strength rests on the AI infrastructure investment boom — management referenced it repeatedly on the Q2 2026 call as a driver of results — versus what happens to advisory and trading revenue once that cycle cools, which will only become clear in coming quarters.
- What Platform Solutions becomes after the full exit from consumer lending (Apple Card, etc.) — its revenue share has shrunk to 0.3%, and whether it's wound down entirely or replaced by something else isn't yet disclosed.
Frequently asked questions
How does Goldman Sachs make money?
Goldman Sachs helps large companies, governments, and wealthy individuals raise capital, trade securities, and grow their money — and gets paid through fees, trading margins, and management fees, rather than the deposit-and-loan spread a traditional bank runs on.
What is Goldman Sachs's market cap?
As of this article's data, Goldman Sachs's market cap was about $332.6B, on FY2025 net income of $17.18B and a 15.0% return on equity.
Is Goldman Sachs a traditional bank?
Not really — it's a securities firm and investment bank rather than a deposit-and-loan bank; it earns fees, trading margins, and management fees rather than an interest-rate spread.