One of the hottest areas in finance in recent years has been the market for private debt, both for the elevated earnings potential on offer and the more recent concerns of weakening creditworthiness. And as with much of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs was there at the beginning.

While Christina Minnis wasn't at Goldman for the birth of private credit, she's helped it grow into a market valued at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion as of 2024. That's up from $357 billion in 2016, or about a five-fold increase. As the bank's global head of credit and asset finance and head of global acquisition finance, Minnis has had a front row seat as mid-market companies have increasingly taken to borrowing from non-bank lenders. (In January 2026, Minnis was named the global head of the alternatives origination group.)

The firm created its GS Mezzanine Partners I fund in 1996 with $1.2 billion. After the 2008 financial crisis, banks pulled back from lending to smaller clients and regulators required tougher underwriting standards, which propelled the private credit market into a whole new option for borrowing. "What really caused the growth in the private credit market was that very good credit pickers could make credit decisions that were based on doing really good diligence and not listening to whether a regulator said this works or doesn't work for a regulated entity," Minnis said. "Goldman Sachs was one of the very first movers in that market."

Minnis's leadership and performance go well beyond private credit, spanning a number of critical business areas for which she is responsible. In 2025, revenue from fixed-income, currencies and commodities at Goldman, for example, rose 13% to a record $4.25 billion, while debt-underwriting revenue climbed 12% to $2.83 billion, according to the firm.

Another indicator of her leadership of the credit and asset finance unit: Last year, Goldman acted as initial coordinating lead arrangers on a record debt financing to build two data centers in Texas and Wisconsin. The Vantage deal raised $38 billion senior secured and $7 billion bridge financing for Vantage Data Centers.

Demand from retail investors entering the private credit market has helped drive growth and the supply of money to be lent, Minnis said.

"It created a huge amount of demand for investment into private credit, and so when you have a lot of capital chasing a finite amount or number of investment opportunities, things can get very aggressive, both on pricing and terms," she said.

Minnis said the key is to put in the time to fully understand who you are lending to, whether in the high-yield bond market or for a private credit deal. "If you have a solid underwriting team that is doing really good diligence and being very discerning as to what they're buying and why, you'll have a great portfolio," she said.

Looking ahead, Minnis is most enthused about the convergence of public and private capital markets, which is reshaping how companies finance acquisitions, notably through customized structures that preserve ratings, maintain financial flexibility, and optimize their capital mix.