Hedge fund manager Lansdowne Partners, which manages $18 billion, raised its stake in Goldman Sachs in the third quarter in the belief that prospects for the investment banking sector are set to improve.

In its newly-published third quarter letter to investors seen by Financial News, Lansdowne said: "Our position in Goldman Sachs increased meaningfully in the quarter. Market dynamics over the third quarter gave us some hope that cyclical conditions had inflected positively."