Directed Share Program

60 GS-Led Deals and Counting Have Leveraged This GS Accelerate Solution

Erin Buckley (left) presenting DSP as part of its incubation with Accelerate’s first class in 2018.

A Directed Share Program (DSP) allows an issuing company to allocate shares in their IPO to friends, family, employees, customers and other key stakeholders who may be otherwise unable to participate.

DSP was one of Accelerate’s first investments in 2018 and was led by Erin Buckley, a vice president in Consumer and Wealth Management.

Goldman Sachs’ DSP solution is a digital platform that allows recipients and the issuer to manage the end-to-end process, including: user-friendly interface for recipients to open an account online; a secure portal for recipients to access offering documents, register their indication of interest, confirm their allocations and trade or transfer their shares; and seamless integration with existing bookbuilding and issuer systems.

As far back as 2016, Erin recognized that DSPs were becoming more prevalent, and when Accelerate launched in 2018, her team at the time decided to apply given the cross-divisional nature of the project.

Through Accelerate, the team was able to garner the support from across the firm that was instrumental in getting this idea off the ground; they partnered closely with colleagues in PWM, IBD, Engineering, Operations, Legal and Compliance over the course of a year to see this through.

“From a personal perspective, the experience opened my eyes to other roles within the firm and led me to my current role as a vice president in CWM and co-head of our Product Management organization in PWM, where I dedicate my time to developing new strategic initiatives for our business,” said Erin. “Helping build DSP made me feel empowered, and gave me the opportunity to problem-solve and build from the ground up.”

Since the first transaction in September 2019, the platform has been used on nearly 60 GS-underwritten transactions. In addition to the commercial impact, DSP has also been used to refer clients to other areas within CWM, such as PWM and Personal Financial Management Group.

As a digital-first product, DSP is a differentiator for the firm and a core part of the PWM and ECM offering for corporate clients.