Goldman Sachs Group Inc. agreed to acquire an online banking unit from General Electric Co. that has about $16 billion of deposits, giving the Wall Street firm access to a cheap source of funding, Bloomberg reported. Goldman Sachs’s banking subsidiary said Thursday it will take on $8 billion in online deposits and $8 billion of brokered certificates of deposit in the agreement with GE Capital Bank. Terms weren’t disclosed for the purchase, which is subject to regulatory approval. Its deposits more than tripled from 2008 to $89 billion at the end of June, cushioning a drop in secured funding and helping to finance an increase in loans.
