Goldman Sachs (GS) is known as a savvy principal investor, but not all of its deals end up winners. Columnist Allan Sloan takes a look at its Hyatt deal. The gilded firm (and some of its clients) and a Sam Walton family investment fund "bought a combined $1 billion of stock from Hyatt. This money--$575 million from Goldman, $425 million from the Waltons--gave Hyatt the cash it needed to buy back $1.1 billion of stock from members of the Pritzker family."

The family is a long-time customer of Goldman Sachs. Both entities later bought more stock at perhaps $26 or so, "lowering the average per-share cost of their overall investment to about $50 and $52." Hyatt is going public at roughly $24 to $26 a share. "It's not clear how much of Goldman's losses are the firm's and how much are its investment clients'," he writes. But Goldman will make some nice fees on the offering, lessening the sting. 

For more:
- here's the Sloan column

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