Maybe let's start at the top in terms of your strategic priorities. You've continued to make significant progress against them. You laid out some of your plans in the recent strategic update. Of course, as everybody in the room knows, the stock has meaningfully outperformed many of your peers. Maybe let's talk about some of the most significant changes over both the longer term in the past year and maybe how Goldman is positioned for the forward.
Sure. So thank you again for having me. And I'm, you know, delighted to be here. The firm has really, you know, for the past, for the past six years, you know, been in execution mode against a plan that was laid out in early 2020 to grow the firm. And after a period of time, you know, coming out of the financial crisis where the firm really didn't grow, you know, we made a very concerted effort to really invest in the growth of the firm, invest to strengthen the client franchise. We had a clear understanding that if we could put more financial resources toward our client base, we could capture market share, and we could grow the firm. And, you know, we've made a lot of progress against that.
I think there are a handful of significant things that we did in what I'll call the first wave, you know, of the strategy to grow the firm. You know, the first, which really is in some way, you know, envisioned in the narrative of One Goldman Sachs, we really made an investment to improve the client franchise, the client centricity of the firm, and to really ensure that we were doing everything we could to deliver for our clients in a very holistic way. And we've gotten incredible feedback on that. But more importantly, when you look at market share data across all different businesses in the firm, you know, that approach has really enhanced our market shares, I think, meaningfully. Secondarily, we, you know, increased the resources available, you know, to serve our clients, particularly resources as a lender and a financier of our clients.
One of the things that we believe deeply, if you're financing your clients and you're providing, you know, the liquidity that they need to run their businesses, it comes back in a virtuous cycle. So we were really operating as an intermediary without being as big a financer. We've shifted that materially. That, that has elevated our position, you know, with our client base and has also contributed to market share gains. Third, we had a whole, handful and a half of Asset and Wealth Management businesses that were operating as independent businesses and weren't getting the benefit of a scaled platform.
And I think the most difficult thing we did was we put all those businesses together and created what is now Asset and Wealth Management, which is the fifth or sixth, seventh, depending on how you look at it, largest active asset manager supervising over $3.5 trillion. And, you know, we went out to the world and said, "We can grow this high single digits in terms of its durable revenue and improve the margins." We just in January increased the margin targets and the return targets for that business. And, you know, that business is growing, you know, better than 10%. And, it's going double digits. And we think there's a lot of runway to continue to grow it. But we also think there's opportunities to kind of accelerate that growth inorganically.
And you saw us do three things last year that have enhanced the trajectory of that business, the partnership with T. Rowe around retirement and both Innovator, you know, which gives us a top 10 position in active ETFs, and also iVentures, which is obviously a very, very interesting activity for our, you know, for our wealth clients. And then wealth continues to be just when you look at ultra-high net worth wealth and what's going on in the world, you know, the opportunity set to continue to grow that and capture more, more share there and to continue to scale that platform, is another big opportunity for the firm that we continue to be very focused on. And so that's kind of been the execution strategy up to this point.
When you look forward now, and we've been talking about this consistently, you know, I think changes in technology allow us to remake operating processes and create more capacity to accelerate our growth as we look forward. And we're extremely focused on kind of operating in an environment where for the first time in a long time, we are not so constrained. And there are, you know, there are two things that are changing that. You know, one is the regulatory environment, both in terms of the capital rules and the way, you know, that sets up. And then secondarily, the regulatory burden in terms of the number of people and resources we had to have addressing regulatory requests of us has backed off. And that frees up more capacity to scale wealth and continue to invest in the business.
So, you know, I think we're in a terrific position. We obviously, given the macro environment, I think have pretty good tailwinds around M&A and capital markets activity. But we can talk about that. And I tend to look at those things over quarters and years, not over days and weeks, when you see a little bit of volatility. But I still think, you know, structurally, the macro environment for a very strong M&A and capital markets, you know, couple of years is in place. And so I think the firm's, you know, very well positioned to continue to execute and deliver for shareholders. And so we feel good about the state of the franchise, feel good about the opportunities in front of us, and feel like the environment sets up very well for the firm.
So before we unpack all the good things that are happening at Goldman, maybe we'll go to the tailwinds that you mentioned, David, about the current operating environment. I think optimism would be an understatement in terms of how investors entered the year with regards to capital markets expectations. So, you know, what is your current view on the macro environment in the 2026 outlook? And what is particularly on top of mind for your clients? And obviously, you brought it up. You know, capital markets is about, you know, the momentum over quarters and years, not weeks. I do have to ask you whether or not some of the concerns, the recent volatility in the software sector, has given you pause.
Yeah, sure. So I, you know, I just start by saying the firm has a deep risk management culture. There isn't a day that goes by no matter what the environment is and no matter what's going on that we don't have armies of people thinking about risk and risk management and, you know, what can go wrong. You know, I wake up most mornings, you know, I woke up this morning, and I was thrilled to see an article in the Wall Street Journal that talked about Goldman Sachs' contribution to the Dow's move from 25,000 to 50,000. My first reaction to that is, "What can possibly go wrong?" Not, "Oh, good." So, we come with a mindset of things will go wrong. You've got to be prepared, you know, to adapt and risk manage around that.
And so we, you know, we start from a place of risk management. Let's start with the macro setup.
Yeah.
The macro setup is very good. Broadly, there are a bunch of things going on that create tailwinds, broad tailwinds for risk assets. There's a very significant amount of fiscal stimulus in place. You know, we're operating in a world where it's very, very hard to see governments develop economies back off of that fiscal stimulus. In addition, a very significant bill was passed last year in the United States, the provisions of which are very fiscally stimulative. They, they picked up, they all popped in in 2026, added to that fiscal stimulus. Second, you have a massive deregulatory trend in the United States after a very tough regulatory period in the United States across all industries. One of the things about regulatory is it requires resources to respond. So that's coming into more balance.
For industries broadly, it's freeing up capacity to invest because the burdens, there should be a regulatory structure. I'm not an, you know, an anti, you know, an anti-regulatory person. But the burdens got to be kind of absurd across a range of industries. They're getting to a more balanced place. So that's a tailwind for more growth. Number three, we're going through a, you know, a technology supercycle where there's a massive amount of investment. That's a structural tailwind for growth in the economy. Three, we have midterm elections and a president here in the United States who is going to take populist actions as we head to those midterm elections. Those populist actions have a tendency to be stimulative. So when you look at all those things, those things create tailwinds for risk assets broadly. Now, what can go wrong?
There's a lot of policy uncertainty. While the president is doing populist things, he also has, you know, a tendency, in policy to move from policy action to policy action. I'd still say there's uncertainty around trade. There is uncertainty around inflation. There's uncertainty on geopolitics for sure. All these things can contribute at some level to creating speed bumps or, you know, slowing down, you know, some of that positive macro momentum. But in the broad distribution of outcomes, I think the likely outcome in 2026 is we're going to have a pretty constructive year for capital markets, a pretty constructive year for M&A, particularly large-cap strategic M&A. The result of that, you know, should be very favorable for the people in this room and the institutions that you cover. But there's certainly plenty of things that could go wrong.
And I would not, I would be surprised, I was going to say I wouldn't be surprised if we have an event like the event we had in April last year that slowed everything down for a period of time. But I'll put it differently. Instead of I wouldn't be surprised, I would expect that we'll have something like that will happen that'll create somewhere in the year a speed bump or recalibration or slowdown. And I think, you know, there, there are a bunch of things that you can worry about on that front, certainly geopolitical things and policy issues. But, you know, I'd also say, you know, what's going on with AI and technology also has the potential to create recalibrations. And there are going to be winners and losers. And this gets to your software question. There are going to be winners and losers.
You know, we've been thinking a lot about technology disruption. But when you start painting spaces with a broad cloth, you know, I don't think that's appropriate. When I look at software exposure, you know, broadly, you know, Goldman Sachs runs a big, big platform. You know, our broad so we have software exposure. But I'd say it's insignificant in the scale of our, you know, our overall platform. But it's certainly something that we're monitoring. I think the narrative over the last week has been a little bit too broad. There'll be winners and losers. And, you know, plenty of companies pivot and do just fine.
So let's double-click on some of your comments on advisory. You are the number one M&A advisor around the world. And you've, you know, touched on some of the preconditions for that kind of activity. Maybe unpack that a little bit more and also talk about where you think equity capital markets and debt capital markets are going to, you know, go in 2026.
Sure. So there're two big drivers for this is overly simplistic, but there are two big drivers for M&A activity, strategic M&A activity on the part of big corporates and sponsor M&A activity. Strategics for the last five years in a different regulatory regime, whatever the question was, the answer was no. Now, whatever the question is, the answer is maybe. And, you know, scale matters enormously. Competitive positioning through scale matters enormously. There isn't a CEO in the world that hasn't woken up and said, "Now is a moment for some period of years where I can do things strategically to strengthen my competitive position." So every CEO in the world is thinking about how that applies to them and what they can do.
We obviously have a great lens into this, you know, given our leading advisory position, because you engage in dialogues, you get mandated to think about things. That gives you an ability to have a pretty broad lens as to what's going on. I'd say there's a lot going on. Now, not all of it will come to fruition. But the pickup of activity, you know, we've manifested it in comments we've made publicly about our advisory backlog, indicates that the level of M&A activity is going to be meaningfully higher than it's been, you know, on average over the course of the last five years. I think there's very little to likely upset that path on the strategic stuff. Of course, if there was a big exogenous shock, it would slow it down.
But that's not my base case. There's going to be a big exogenous shock this year. And so CEOs see that opportunity, and they're running toward it. With respect to sponsors, you know, we've all kind of been waiting impatiently for that to accelerate. You know, I think we're reaching a point where it's accelerating. You all probably saw Jon Gray on television last week when he reported his earnings, making a very, very strong statement that they are going to sell a lot of things this year. Now, of course, there are things that can, you know, get in the way of that too. But I think we're reaching a point in time where that unlock is, you know, that unlock is occurring. And so all that's quite constructive.
I think the other thing that's going on with respect to the equity capital markets is you have a handful of these very, very large companies that have decided for a variety of reasons they want to get to the public markets. For some of them, it's just the scale of the capital's gotten to a place that they want that additional channel. So I think you're going to see a handful of those happen. You know, just generally speaking, that will create a more constructive IPO market. You know, in terms of the M&A market, you know, I think this could be, you know, this could be a, you know, a top decile, top quartile, certainly, potentially top decile kind of M&A opportunity set.
In terms of equity capital markets, it's not going to look like it looked in 2021, which was the last kind of top quartile, top decile opportunity set. But it's going to be a significant improvement over the base that we've seen over the course of the last few years. I think that has reasonable momentum at this point in time. I look at the backlog. I look at people that are going to go. You know, I think it's going to be, there's going to be a better pull-through than what's been expected. Of course, at any point in time, if there are big exogenous shocks, things can slow down. But the direction of travel, I think, is clear.
I just wanted to follow up on the sponsors because we've been waiting and waiting and waiting for the sponsors to monetize. Where are we in terms of the timing versus valuation discussion?
You know, I think we're at a point where, you know, sure, you can find lots of companies where the sponsors want this, the sponsors want that. I think the pressure on the sponsor community, this is a generalization, of course, with every firm, it's different. But the pressure from the LPs at this point, and people are getting into fund cycles where they've got to raise more money, they've got to return capital. And so the valuation's becoming less important. They've got to return capital. Whether they're selling stuff and they're going to the M&A market or they're getting stuff public, they've got to return more capital.
I just think the pressure from the LP community and the cycle life of fundraising has reached a point in time for most of these firms that they, they can't get into the valuation debate as much. They've got to move forward. So I think you're going to see an improvement in that for sure.
Just as a follow-up here on debt capital markets, given the, you know, your expectations for advisory activity and lower rates, you know, DCM has been a big help for all of the, you know, big firms. Is that going to continue from a momentum standpoint?
Yeah, the, you know, there's significant activity. That activity has to be financed.
Yeah.
And so I think you're going to see an improvement. You know, again, the debt and equity capital markets activity is not going to look like the peak levels that we saw in 2021, you know, during that moment. But they are accelerating off a base. What's going on around AI infrastructure is creating an opportunity that's enormous. You look, Google, I think, just yesterday did another, you know, significant financing, and they're in the market, you know, doing some financings overseas, I believe, today. The need for capital to continue on this technology cycle is going to have an impact on the overall capital raising cycle. And so I see all this stuff accelerating. And I, you know, I feel pretty good about it. That doesn't mean it all happens perfectly in a straight line. It won't.
But we're just in a different place than we were in 2022, 2023, and 2024. And you're going to see the benefit of that pull-through.
Wanted to switch to the trading outlook. Last year, the industry saw the trading wallet expand. Of course, your firm performed very strongly in that context. How are you thinking about the FIC and equities outlook from here? I just wanted to unpack maybe this discussion and talk about durability here versus just cyclicality.
Sure. You know, the environment for trading continues to be constructive. But I think one of the things that people miss, the size and the scale of these businesses for the leading players and the breadth of products and services create, broadly speaking, you know, more durable businesses. And there's a lot of activity in the world. There are a lot of people moving money around in the world. Some of the volatility that we saw last week creates opportunities too. And when we look at these businesses, we try to kind of look and say, "Okay, let's look at 10-year averages." You know, we put up a great chart. I think it was a year ago, right? A year ago in one of our updates, you know, basically saying, "Take the 10-year lows, okay?
Now look at the variability in the high." I think what we love about our business, when there is volatility that creates upside wallet, we, I think, do as good a job, if not a better job, capturing a better share of that upside potential in those environments. But when you look over a 10-year period, these businesses are big, durable businesses that create a certain amount of activity. They just operate with fundamentally much less leverage than they operated with, you know, 15 years ago. People think about them through a rearview mirror lens, not through a forward lens. So that doesn't mean that if we had a very difficult economic environment for a period of time, there couldn't be slowdowns in these businesses. But there's a base durability, especially given all the financing that's going on in these businesses.
That's one of the reasons why we try to break out the financing and the intermediation so people could see that that puts a base under these markets' businesses.
So as we move forward, what area, excuse me, what areas are you focused on to drive additional wallet share? And also, you've mentioned deregulation, a couple of times during this fireside chat. Are there opportunities to regain some of the market share that was maybe scattered, when prudential regulation around the world was getting built up post-financial crisis?
So, you know, in wallet, you know, when you talk about wallet and our core business of banking and markets, you know, our operating philosophy is to constantly look at everything we do and try to diligently understand where we're outperforming, where we're underperforming. And any place we're underperforming, try to adjust. Again, these are big, big, big businesses. We've been the leading M&A advisor for 23 years in a row, which is really extraordinary to have a position like that for that period of time. I think one of the reasons why is because I know that team, while we might be number one every year for 23 years, one year we're number three in healthcare instead of number one. One year we could be number five in consumer, but we're number one in, you know, energy and tech.
We're constantly looking at where we have gaps and trying to say, "How can we improve those gaps?" You know, the goal is to not just be number one across the top. Of course, that's the overriding goal. The goal is to ensure we're as close to number one in every subsector we can possibly be and to strengthen the overall lead we have in that leadership position. And that's no different than the way we look at our markets' wallet share. We have 150 accounts that we call the top 150 that are the biggest, most important accounts. They're a significant part of the overall markets' business wallet. We're top three with 123 of those 150 accounts. We're also looking at the 123 that we're top three with and saying, "How many are we number one with? How many are we three where we should be two?
How many are we three where we should be one? How many are we two where we should be one?" There's a constant process of saying, "How do we improve gaps that exist in our wallet and improve our wallet share?" And, you know, as if you do that, you know, you edge along over time. Now, we made some very significant wallet gains. And I'm not sitting here saying we have that kind of wallet to improve. But there's a discipline in the firm from an operating perspective to always try to add to wallet and maximize wallet. And we remain, you know, we remain very, you know, very, very focused on, you know, on that, on that wallet, that, that, that wallet opportunity.
So switching gears to Asset and Wealth Management, which is clearly a big focus area for you and a big focus area for your investors. So top five, active Asset Manager globally, demonstrated your durable revenues here and also updated your medium-term targets, which we'll unpack. What underpins your confidence in achieving these targets? And what's your growth strategy from here?
So, you know, the question we get asked, you know, a question about targets, what underpins your confidence? What one of the we would not put a target out unless we had really done the work and we were really confident that we had the building blocks in place to deliver on that target. What's driving the target changes in Asset and Wealth Management, which is really the margin and the returns, is we had all these businesses. We put them together. They had a lot of capital in them. We've been bringing the capital out. That improves the returns. And we've been scaling these alternative platforms. And the alternative platforms are going on fee. You could all look, everybody here can look at other alternative platforms. Other alternative platforms have higher margin.
The profitability contribution from alternatives as opposed to the more traditional Asset Management business is higher margin. That mix has been improving as we scale our alternatives business. We're raising $75 billion to $100 billion of alternatives each year. They're going on fee. So it's been a journey. That's why we said we can get to 25%. Now, we've said we can get to 30% margin because we're adding the building blocks. You can see, we see the fundraising target. We see how much more is going to come on, is going to come on fee. It gives us a lot of confidence that we can grow the durable revenues, as we've said. As you grow those durable revenues and they come on fee, the margin mix is improving. That gives us a lot of confidence that we can hit the targets.
And so, Asset Management, there are a lot of people in this room that know this. The Asset Management business is a very good business, especially if you have franchise positions to continue to bring new fee-paying assets, you know, into your business. I think one of the things that makes our platform so attractive is the platform is set up globally at scale across, you know, all silos. So we're very well positioned to have tailwinds on our ability to bring long-term fee-based flows in as we look forward. And not all Asset Management businesses are positioned that way. Our wealth channel is also super attractive and super unique. And the wealth channel, you know, drives some of that opportunity. You know, we obviously focus on this ultra-high net worth channel.
But if you look at what's going on in the world and what's going on with Asset prices, you look at the generational wealth transfer that's coming up, you know, that wealth channel is very well positioned. And that adds, you know, to our confidence and our ability to continue to deliver the growth that we've suggested we can grow here.
So let's unpack that in terms of the ultra-high net worth franchise as a key driver of growth. This is clearly a part of the wealth management ecosystem that a lot of firms are looking to expand in. What's differentiating Goldman here? And maybe detail some of the key opportunities that you're focused on.
Well, we have the core wealth business at Goldman Sachs is if there are, you know, 100,000 ultra-wealthy people, and let's, we do this around the world, but let's just take the United States for one. If there are 100,000 ultra-wealthy people in the United States, don't take this as a fact. Take it more as a direction. 15,000 of them have wealth at Goldman Sachs. So for starters, there's no reason why 20,000 of them couldn't have wealth at Goldman Sachs. But it scales with people and footprint. This is a business that is a high touch, high service, personal, you know, personal trust kind of business. We're very good in those kinds of businesses. We know how to scale those kinds of businesses. We know how to operate them. But you have to do it over time.
They scale with people. I just think we're very well positioned for that. There are other opportunities for us in wealth that we're approaching slightly differently. There are people that have broader high net worth wealth platforms. They need manufacturing capability of really interesting products. We have extraordinary manufacturing capability in our Asset Management business. So we are a very attractive manufacturer of product. Our brand is attractive. So other people's distribution, people like partnering with us. When you look broadly at third-party wealth distribution, we're a very attractive partner in that. So we have access through lots of other people's distribution channels to very, you know, significant wealth. But there, we don't own the client relationship. We're creating the product, you know, for other people's clients.
I think we're very well positioned in this ecosystem, very, very strong growth opportunity in the ultra, you know, the ultra-high net worth, you know, area and continuing to scale that, all over the world. I think it's a very, I think our business there and our brand there is very unique. That doesn't mean there aren't certain competitors. We run a very, very unique platform in that business.
Before we talk about manufacturing, I just wanted to make sure we stopped at your new annual long-term fee-based net inflow target for your wealth management business. Could you help investors maybe understand the decision to focus on this target for wealth?
Yeah. We wanted, we wanted to put out something that we could track. And by the way, there're, there are two reasons to create targets. One reason to create targets is to give people outside, investors, a sense of what we're doing and to create a roadmap and transparency for them. Another is to hold our people internally accountable for what we expect them to do to actually grow the business.
And so, you know, we came to this target as a way to set expectations, you know, internally as to what we expected to drive the growth of the business, so that we can kind of rally the organization behind a goal that if we execute on that, we believe we can, or we would not have put the target out, you know, we can continue to deliver on what we need to deliver on, on our wealth growth.
On alternatives, I think since your first investor day, you've fundraised $440 billion. You mentioned a $75 to $100 billion per year target, which would be a 2030 AUS goal of $750.
$750 of fee-based stuff in 2030.
Fee-based. $750 fee-based. Where are you seeing the most demand at the moment?
You're really seeing it across the spectrum of the opportunity set. You know, as we've said before, we have two businesses that really are truly scaled, Credit and what we call XIG, you know, our external investing platform. And there's good demand there. But there continues to be good demand around infrastructure. And, you know, there continues to be demand. And I think this is one of the things we can deliver from our clients for tailored solutions. So you're talking to a huge sovereign wealth fund in Asia that doesn't have enough exposure to European credit. And so can we create, you know, a European credit sleeve that's specifically designed to meet exposures that they want? Because of the scale of our platform, we have an ability, you know, to do things like that.
So I think I'm seeing more tailored solutions for sure in the alternative space. You know, I think that's, I think that's something that'll, that's something that'll continue. I think it's also important to put out when we talk about, we talk about this fundraising, correct me if I'm wrong, Jehan, we're, we're talking about fundraising. We're not talking about leverage, in the context in which we talk about fund sizes and, and some of this stuff. You know, I, you know, others talk about the leverage and, you know, the fee-based stuff. We're talking about the fee-based stuff.
Maybe just to, you know, top off this conversation, there's a secular trend clearly in wealth, towards higher allocation to private assets and alternatives. We heard that from my boss yesterday. I'm sure we'll hear that from Morgan Stanley later this afternoon. So how are you thinking about that in context of your business and your wealth goals?
Well, there's no, there's no, you know, our client base in our wealth business has been deep in alts for a long, long time. And one of the things that brought people onto our wealth platform, very, very wealthy people onto our wealth platform, is the access they got to, to, to alts products, to private products, whether it was direct, our manufacturing, and our, you know, our, you know, access to stuff that was super attractive and super attractive funds or super attractive, you know, individual, you know, investments and individual, you know, growthy companies. So, you know, that was, that was something that was certainly attractive. So they've been deep in. What you're talking about a little bit now is there's no question that a broader array of wealthy investors, you know, particularly high net worth wealth investors, want access to these privates.
They want access in retirement. They want an allocation to this. And we're seeing, you know, the expansion of that and the distribution of these products in different forms, you know, into those channels. I think that is something that has pretty significant secular tailwinds. But it's not going to be without bumps and bruises.
Right.
From a risk management perspective, it's something we're thinking about very, very carefully and very thoughtfully. These are long-dated, illiquid products. There are certain liquidity provisions. But generally, these are less liquid products. And, you know, I think it's important as you grow the distribution of this to be very, very thoughtful about how they're sold, how they're marketed, whether investors really understand what they're buying, whether it's appropriate. And I think those are things that, that require a lot of time. But the secular growth and allowing people to participate, you know, I think is happening for sure. It's one of the ironies that I find very, very interesting is we put enormously high standards on letting people, you know, take long-term positions in things that should be reasonable investments. Of course, there's risk.
But, you know, there are lots of other things you can buy in this world that have no regulatory oversight that are a lot riskier. And you know, the parameters are different. So this is a good thing, I think, for participation in capital markets and capital formation. It is one of the strengths of the U.S. financial system that people have the risk mindset and they want to participate in this. I think we all, as participants in the market, have a responsibility to be very thoughtful and disciplined on how we execute against it over time. And there will be speed bumps because people will do things that need to be ultimately, you know, reined in or have better guardrails or provisions around them.
That's very much in line with what our CEO said as well.
Good. Okay. Well, then Sergio and I see it the same way.
Absolutely. Let's switch gears to capital, right? And I guess let's just put this in context because, you know, we're at a seminal moment for deregulation here in the U.S. So, maybe quick thoughts on that. And you're sitting on so much excess capital. Where are the most attractive places to deploy this organically?
Well, you know, you, you said we're at a seminal moment for deregulation. It seems every few years there's a seminal moment for deregulation. I, you know, I think, I think what's happening now is a reaction to how hard the pendulum swung over the last five years. But I think the big thing that's going on, forgetting about the short-term swings, is, you know, Dodd-Frank created a regulatory structure and significantly, I mean, if you really step back, even though Dodd-Frank was 1,800 pages, the two principal things that Dodd-Frank did was it took leverage way down in the regulated financial system, and it took liquidity provisioning way up, which fundamentally made the system more safe and more durable. That doesn't mean that the system's without risk. But we're now 17 years past that. We operate in a different world with different scale businesses.
One of the things that had been going on is that capital was continuing to grow in these large institutions. There's a cost to that. It's never going to be perfect. But I think you want to operate, you know, here in the U.S., a banking system that is safe and secure. But of course, safe and secure, there's going to be risk. But you want to have as much of the capital lending and redeployed and recycling into driving growth and investment. So I think we're getting a reset, you know, around that to a much healthier place. You know, it's interesting. Jay Powell, when he came in, said, "I think capital in the banking system is about right." Yet capital in the banking system during Jay Powell's tenure has grown. These are rough numbers, 25%.
Every year, he would say, "Capital's about right." The capital would grow some more. "Capital's about right." The capital would grow some more. We're going through a process of kind of resetting to a level that frees up, you know, capital, to be deployed, you know, into the system in a variety of different ways. This tails back to a question that you asked that I didn't, I didn't answer for you is, is there a little bit of rebalancing? There's a bunch of lending activity that was in the regulated banking system that got pushed to other participants, to insurance platforms and to other participants in private credit. The banking, the regulated banking sector is going to be more competitive on a lot of this lending given the way, whether it's SLR or the overall capital regime has shifted.
That's going to change that competitive environment, a little bit. For us, you know, the capital waterfall hasn't changed. It's the same thing. We want to deploy capital to serve our clients. And where we see opportunities, we are going to deploy. It's not infinite, though. And, you know, as a result of that, if we don't, if we can't get the capital deployed in the business to add accretive returns, we will do what we can to return that capital back to shareholders where they can recycle it. And I do, you know, I do operate with a point of view that we have to get the capital out of the business because just keeping the capital in the business, drags returns. And, you know, of course, there can be some short-term management of that.
At the end of the day, our job is to get it deployed against our client base and our business where we can earn incremental returns. If we don't see those opportunities, our job is to get it out as quickly as we can.
In the past year, you've also announced two acquisitions geared toward accelerating growth in AWM. Should we expect you to continue to deploy some of the excess capital for inorganic? If so, what areas are you most attracted to?
You know, I'll say the same thing I've, you know, said about this for, you know, for a number of years. We would love to find interesting inorganic things that can accelerate the scale and the growth of our Asset and Wealth Management platform. I think we found a handful of things this past year. But I'd be the first to caveat that they were small, small but important because they filled some gaps. If there were other things that could accelerate that journey and continue to evolve the mix of the firms so that the scale of Asset and Wealth relative to banking and markets continue to shift, we would, we would try to do that. However, to do significant things, the bar is going to be very high. And we're incredibly focused on the culture of the firm and the way the firm operates culturally.
And, you know, we will be extremely cautious in doing, you know, anything that we think can upset kind of the cultural ethos of the way the firm, you know, the way the firm operates. The best, most attractive things generally are not for sale. And, the best, most attractive things, if they are for sale, aren't for sale at times when you can buy them. And so a lot of this, you know, a lot of this is deciding what looks really interesting and taking a very long-term view and then seeing if opportunities, you know, pop up. You know, I know as a reference, and I'll make it a reference, you know, James Gorman wanted to buy E*TRADE for over a decade. And then there was an opportunity where Morgan Stanley could.
That's, you know, as a CEO kind of strategically thinking, you know, things pop up. And you've got to have a clear lens as to what's additive, what's not. So when things pop up, you have an ability to decide whether or not it fits and it's right for you. And so, you know, if you look, they're small. But if you look at the two things we did last year, you know, iVentures popped up. And we were very lucky because somebody approached iVentures. And we had had a long relationship with iVentures.
And so Hans Swildens, the owner of iVentures, came to Mike Brandmeyer at Goldman Sachs and said, "Somebody's come and wants to buy my business. And I, you know, I like to think about it. Can you help me think about it?" And Mike said, "No, I can't help you think about that. But I'll help you think about selling it to Goldman Sachs."
And so, you know, that's, you know, that wasn't on our radar screen that that was something we would do last year. You know, Innovator popped up because Bruce Bond decided they were going to sell the business. And so we knew we were looking for something that could accelerate our position in active ETFs. And so when we heard that was happening, we were ready. We had done work. We were ready to say, "This fits some of the things we want to try to do." So you never know what's going to pop up. You know, you can take a long-term strategic view with some bigger things. But it's hard to buy the really good things. But if we could and it fit culturally, we'd certainly think about it.
It's a good place for capital to go if you're making the right decisions.
How real is the concept of having a narrow regulatory window to do strategic deals for you, particularly given that you're G-SIB and that you're Goldman Sachs?
You know, what I would say about that is we have a window at the moment where large financial institutions probably can do some things. You know, the kinds of things we're talking about in Asset and Wealth Management, I don't think are things that in most environments you wouldn't be able to do. I think there's a general point of view that a firm like Goldman Sachs doing more in Asset and Wealth Management makes the institution more stable, more durable. There's a regulatory lens that the regulators would like to see that. That's very different than a G-SIB buying a large regional bank. That's very different than G-SIB to G-SIB consolidation. Those are things that I think will always have regulatory headwinds. There might be some windows when you can and some windows when you can't.
But the stuff we're focused on, generally speaking, the regulatory world says more Asset and Wealth Management , more durability. Those are things that generally, in most environments, I can't say in all, in most environments, you'd get, you get support for that direction of travel.
So finally, we just have a few minutes. You know, maybe to close, David, you talked about Goldman Sachs as a growing company, not just, you know, a cyclically well-positioned company for 2026 but a growing company.
We're that too.
Yeah. Good.
Cyclically well-positioned and growing.
So both. That's a good Venn diagram for the stock price. So maybe a few closing remarks on sort of what you want investors to most take away about Goldman in 2026 and beyond.
Well, I just, you know, I think people have, it's human nature to look through the rearview mirror. And all our experiences, everything that we see is shaped by what we've experienced, okay? And so, you know, when looking at our industry, it is human nature to look through the rearview mirror. And even though, you know, the rearview mirror has this thing that's 17 years back in the rearview mirror, it was such a thing that it shaped a lot of the lens. These institutions are just very, very different. And we're operating in a different world. There are, you know, enormous scale advantages for the large players, you know, in these businesses. And, you know, the durability of these businesses has evolved. That does not mean that there can't be environments where there are headwinds to earnings and earnings decline.
If we had an economic recession, financial institutions would have headwinds to earnings. There'd also be some countercyclical things, or some procyclical things in that environment too that would balance some of that. But these businesses are diverse, durable, and have an ability in a growing economy to grow more than historically, I think, they've been credited with. And I think the earnings, which are significant, I think investors are coming around to a point of view that the historic multiples are too low based on the earnings durability of these businesses now. And, you know, I think there's an opportunity to continue to grow these franchises. The world's going to, I'm in the camp, the world is going to grow. The United States is going to grow. Our firm, our business is definitely more correlated to the U.S. than the world.
But we're correlated to growth in the world too. And the opportunity set for us to deploy, you know, our services and our resources against our clients with that growth will allow us to continue to grow the firm. And if we grow the firm, we will grow earnings. And, you know, I just think we're well-positioned to continue to do that on a relative basis well. And so we're very focused on that. We understand our job is to grow earnings for shareholders. We're very focused on that. We're good, nimble deployers of capital. And I, I see lots of opportunities. And there'll be ups and downs. But I think the firm is just very well-positioned in the things that we do to continue to grow and deliver for shareholders.
Well, David, that was an invigorating start to the day. I appreciate the chat. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.