Goldman Sachs names investment banker in new transaction banking role

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc has appointed Akila Raman as chief commercial and strategy officer of transaction banking within its newly formed Platform Solutions unit, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters on Thursday.

Raman joins the unit from within the bank, where she recently served as chief operating officer of investment banking, the memo said.

In October, Goldman scaled back ambitions for its direct-to consumer bank Marcus by placing it under the newly-merged asset and wealth division. It also swept parts of the business into a new unit called platform solutions, which houses transaction banking, credit cards and financial technology.

Platform Solutions suffered a net loss of $1.67 billion last year, the bank said, due to higher provisioning for potential bad loans.

The Wall Street bank has been beefing up the new unit with hires such as Zeeshan Razzaqui who recently became co-head of merchant point-of-sale lending at the unit.

ETF Accelerator, which is headed by Lisa Mantil, also became part of Platform Solutions recently. The business enables its clients to launch, list, and manage their exchange traded funds (ETFs).

(Reporting by Saeed Azhar)