Goldman Sachs sells warehouse division

The global financial firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc., New York City, has completed the sale of its Metro International Trade Services business to a subsidiary of Reuben Bros., a private equity and real estate firm. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. According to one news report, Goldman Sachs purchased Metro in 2010 for $550 million.

Metro is a global warehouse operator specializing in the storage of nonferrous metals for the London MetalExchange (LME). In addition to its headquarters in Detroit, the company also has offices in Long Beach, California; New Orleans; and Trieste, Italy.

The sale of Goldman Sachs’ warehouse business comes after lawsuits and significant pressure by many in the aluminum industry who claimed that the financial firm, through its aluminum warehousing strategy, had unfair control over aluminum supply and pricing and used the warehouse to hoard aluminum.

According to a Financial Times report, Metro has nearly 30 warehouses that contain the largest LME-certified aluminum stocks in the United States.

Reuben Bros., with offices in London, New York and Switzerland, has previous experience in the United Kingdom metals warehousing market and before that was involved in the Russian aluminum industry.