Goldman Sachs' future hinges on a low-profile, high-growth business

cnbc.com:

In this article

Goldman Sachs is known as Wall Street's top brand, a juggernaut employing some of the world's best traders and investment bankers.

But it's facing an inflection point: Those high-profile businesses have fallen out of favor with investors since the 2008 financial crisis. Instead, it's been steady, fee-generating areas like wealth and asset management that are valued far more than boom-or-bust activities like trading or advising on mergers.

Goldman shares have been stuck at a relatively low price-to-tangible-book value, a key industry metric that measures how the market sizes up a firm compared to the value of its hard assets. Goldman trades for just above one times price to TBV, while rivals including JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley are valued at roughly double that.

Which is why Goldman CEO David Solomon has hitched his fortunes to asset and wealth management. His latest move positions Goldman to take advantage of two big trends in finance: The rise of alternative assets including private equity and growth in the fortunes of the ultrarich.

Still, concerns surfaced recently after former asset management co-head Julian Salisbury departed Goldman for a smaller rival. Salisbury, who was most recently chief investment officer for AWM, is joining San Francisco-based private equity firm Sixth Street. His former co-head, Luke Sarsfield, also left earlier this year, helping fuel worries about a brain drain at the firm.

Goldman, which put former trading co-head <a