Goldman Sachs' Sumit Rajpal is retiring, dealing a blow to CEO David Solomon's plan to build a Blackstone-like alternatives investment platform

• Goldman Sachs partner Sumit Rajpal is retiring from the bank, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
• He was slated to be one of the lead investors on Goldman's eighth private equity fund. The fundraising is planned to begin next week, according to Reuters.
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Another Goldman partner is exiting, and this time the departure may take a bite out of the firm's growth plans.

Sumit Rajpal, one of three co-heads of a merged alternative investing unit created by Solomon last year, has announced his resignation, according to people with knowledge of the talks.

His retirement leaves Andrew Wolfe as the most senior operating executive left from Goldman's old merchant banking division.

Rajpal and Wolfe were also slated to be lead investors for Goldman's eighth private equity fund, which, according to a Reuters report today, will kick off fundraising next week. The bank is aiming to raise $8 billion and complete a first close by the end of March, at which point it can begin making investments, the wire service reported.

That will be made more difficult with Rajpal's departure. The exit of a fund leader in the middle of a fundraising is usually a faux pas in the world of institutional money, where pensions, endowments and sovereign wealth funds don't like to see turnover when they consider giving money to a manager. Their expectation is the individuals responsible for the returns will continue making investment decisions after clients have given their money.

Solomon was warned by other Goldman execs that something like this might happen when he shared plans last year to merge a collection of highly successful investing teams into a single unit. Each of the businesses he planned to bring together - the merchant bank, the special situations group, and the principal strategic investments group, among them - had a specific culture and way of working. The risk they raised then is playing out - that the plan could hobble the teams and lead to the exit of talented executives.

Since June, when Solomon announced his plan, the merger has been beset by doubts over the strategy's wisdom and internal rivalries, people told Business Insider in July. Friedman has resisted the plan from the start. In his 60s, he's nearing retirement age and was concerned the plan could somehow harm the businesses. He questioned why it was necessary to disrupt the status quo by taking what some may consider unneeded risk.

Through the fall and into the end of the year, the jockeying for power continued. At Goldman's investor day last month, Salisbury was the only one of the three to appear onstage in front of investors. At one point, a Goldman employee suggested that Rajpal and Wolfe now reported to Salisbury.

Rajpal and Wolfe were expecting to be named to Goldman's management committee, its most powerful decision-making body, according to people with knowledge of their expectations. When Solomon named a quintet of executives to the committee in mid-January, including the head of the firm's foundation and wealth management, neither man was on the list.

The merger claimed another partner earlier this week when Rana Yared, a leader in the principal strategic investments unit and a rising star, announced her resignation to join one of Europe's leading venture capital firms, Balderton Capital.

Rajpal, though considered by some to be prickly or difficult to deal with, is one of Goldman's most successful private equity investors. He led the firm's investment in TransUnion, where Goldman made more than $2.8 billion on its investment. He also helped conceive of another Goldman growth project, its digital consumer bank.

When Friedman was asked to come with business ideas to a 2014 offsite at Gary Cohn's Hamptons home, he brought in Rajpal and shot for the moon. Their idea, now known as Marcus, has made more than $7 billion in unsecured consumer and credit card loans and attracted more than $60 billion in deposits.

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