Goldman Sachs, China's CIC to launch up to $5 billion fund: sources

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs is partnering with sovereign fund China Investment Corp (CIC) to jointly launch an up to $5 billion fund to invest in U.S. manufacturers, according to people familiar with the situation.

The details of the fund will be announced on Thursday as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to China, said the people, who declined to be named as the information is not public yet.

The Goldman-CIC fund will aim to bolster its returns by helping the companies it invests in to expand their market in China, they said.

News of the fund was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Goldman Sachs declined to comment, while CIC did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The exact amount contributed to the new fund by each side is still being finalised, according to the people.

Goldman's Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein will visit China as part of a business delegation, which is being led by U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, this week at the same time as Trump.

China is an important region for Goldman, which ranked as the top M&A dealmaker in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan in the first nine months of the year, according to Thomson Reuters data.

While Wall Street firms such as Goldman have to partner with a Chinese joint venture firm to run their investment banking businesses on the mainland, U.S. banks have for years been trying to operate these businesses on their own.

CIC, one of the biggest sovereign funds globally, has made a series of large investments this year including the $13.7 billion acquisition of warehouse firm Logicor, Europe's biggest ever private equity real estate deal.

(Reporting by Jennifer Hughes; additional reporting by Julie Zhu; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Mark Potter)