A Goldman Sachs Group Inc. private credit fund said investors sought to pull just under 5% of their cash in the first quarter, narrowly escaping a broader exodus that has forced peers to cap withdrawals.

The $15.7 billion Goldman Sachs Private Credit Corp., which manages a so-called non-traded business development company, met redemption requests in the first quarter amounting to 4.999% of its outstanding shares, according to a filing on Monday. That contrasts with peers including Blue Owl Capital Inc. that saw redemption requests dramatically higher than an industry-wide 5% limit.

Redemption requests were still above the 3.5% rate seen in the fourth quarter. A representative for Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

Private credit funds geared toward the retail crowd have seen a sharp pullback in investor demand since the beginning of the year, with many seeking to exit their positions. Many managers have chosen to cap such requests, leaving over $8 billion trapped in such vehicles to date.

“We are the only non-traded BDC in the peer group whose repurchase requests came in below the standard 5% quarterly cap,” the fund said in a letter to shareholders. With subscriptions of around $1.04 billion, net flows were positive during the quarter, which Goldman said contrasted with negative flows for many of their competitors.

The fund pointed to its reliance on institutional capital rather than retail investors, which have been bolting in larger numbers amid worries over lending standards and exposure to companies vulnerable to disruption from artificial intelligence.

“To be clear, we are in the same market as the other non-traded BDCs and we are certainly not insulated from the dynamics of the industry,” the Goldman fund managers wrote.

“However,” they said, “we remain confident that the more important point is a structural one: we have strategically diversified our sources of capital by maintaining an institutionally oriented private credit platform, which means we can be patient, we can pace our deployment at our discretion, and when coupled with our origination ecosystem, provides us with a competitive advantage throughout the credit cycle.”

The Goldman fund generated a 0.4% return this year through the end of February, trailing the 1.3% seen during the same period last year, filings show. Performance has slipped broadly in the industry, with an Ares Management Corp. fund posting a 0.68% loss in February, its steepest monthly decline since its creation in 2022.

Goldman also said that it has already seen benefits from less capital flowing into the asset class, including wider spreads and better documentation, “as lenders who depend on traditional retail inflows begin to pull back.”

Written by: Shannon D Harrington and Olivia Fishlow @Bloomberg

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