Goldman Sachs Group's asset management arm has raised over $700m in capital commitments for Union Bridge Partners I, a new opportunistic co-investment strategy that will focus on making investments alongside hedge funds and private credit firms.

In a statement on Thursday, Goldman Sachs confirmed that the new fund will source "high conviction positions" from "leading external private credit and hedge fund managers", and invest "side-by-side, working together with them to help drive positive outcomes".

The capital was raised from institutions, family offices, private wealth clients and significant commitments from Goldman Sachs employees.

The closed-end fund — part of Goldman Sachs’s $340bn External Investing Group, which helps clients to find, access and assess opportunities from third-party asset managers — is already around 40% deployed and has provided customised capital solutions to companies across North America and Europe in sectors including hospitality, fitness centres, software and music royalties.

In the statement, Philip Pallone, who leads the Union Bridge program, said: “We have seen a significant increase in the opportunity to partner with our external managers to provide flexible capital solutions to companies across public and private markets. The Union Bridge programs allows us to be stronger partners to our external managers by committing value-added capital in their highest-conviction opportunities while at the same time providing our clients access to differentiated, often exclusive, investments that they would not otherwise be able to access.”