For years, Goldman Sachs’s asset management business has been the envy of Wall Street. While other investment banks have struggled to establish a hedge fund arm, Goldman has raced ahead. At the end of May, it had $151bn of alternative assets, making it one of the world’s largest hedge fund managers.

In the past week, however, Goldman learned that being a big hedge fund manager can be a mixed blessing when wild swings in the global markets undermined some of its high-profile quantitative funds. Its Global Equity Opportunities fund suffered such heavy losses that Goldman on Monday took the unprecedented step of putting $2bn of its own capital in the fund.