Goldman Sachs’s newly-reorganised real estate investment unit is reviving a fund business that the firm shut down after it suffered steep losses during the financial crisis.

The new group is raising a $2.5bn real estate fund structured similarly to the former Whitehall family of property funds, according to people familiar with the matter. This business thrived in the 1990s and early 2000s, turning big profits on deals such as New York’s Rockefeller Center and Canada real estate giant Cadillac Fairview.