Steven Terner Mnuchin is the current US Secretary of the Treasury in the administration of President Trump. He has also been a hedge fund manager, an investment banker, and a film producer.
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Early Life and Education
Steven was born in 21st Dec, 1962, to Robert E. Mnuchin and Elaine Terner Cooper, into a Jewish family, in NYC. His father worked at Goldman Sachs as a partner; he was also a management committee member and oversaw equity trading. Robert also founded the Mnuchin Gallery, an art gallery in NYC.
Steven studied at NYC’s Riverdale Country School. He then attended Yale University and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1985.
Banking and Finance career
Mnuchin began his career when still studying at Yale in the early eighties at Salomon Brothers investment bank as a trainee.
After graduating from Yale, Steven joined Goldman Sachs and began working in the mortgage section. He gradually climbed the ranks, became a partner in 1994, and was promoted as the Chief Information Officer in 2001. After working for Sachs for 17 years, Mnuchin left the bank in 2002. He received over $12 million in compensation and nearly $47 million worth of stocks of the company.
After leaving Sachs, Steven worked at ESL Investments for a short time. In 2003, he founded the firm ‘SFM Capital Management’ and then ‘Dune Capital Management’ hedge fund of which he was the CEO.
In 2009, Steven purchased IndyMac, a residential lender that had failed due to the 2008 financial crisis. He renamed it as OneWest Bank and became its Chairman and CEO. OneWest later purchased many other failed banks, including La Jolla Bank and First Federal Bank of California. OneWest Bank turned profitable after one year and had assets worth over $26 billion. It also became Southern California’s biggest bank. Mnuchin sold it to the CIT Group in 2015 for more than $3 billion. Steven also got nearly $100 million in stocks of CIT Group and became a member of its board. He resigned from the board in Dec, 2016, after getting nominated as Secretary of Treasury. He also resigned from the board of trustees of the Los Angeles-based Museum of Contemporary Art.
Career as film producer
Mnuchin established Dune Entertainment in 2004. It produced a lot of successful movies like Avatar, the X-Men series, Mad Max: Fury Road, the Lego Movie, and American Sniper, etc.
Mnuchin and Politics
Steven has made donations to many candidates between 1995 and 2014, including to the campaigns of John Kerry, Al Gore, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton. In 2016, he donated to the Trump and Paul Ryan campaigns.
Steven was appointed the national finance chairman of Trump’s campaign in April 2016. Trump announced that Steven will be his nominee as Secretary of Treasury in Nov, 2016. He was confirmed by the Senate in Feb 2017.
Personal life and Trivia
- Steven has married 3 times. His first marriage was to Kathryn Leigh McCarver; they married in 1992 and divorced in 1999.
- He married Heather deForest Crosby in 1999. The couple moved into a $27 million 21,000 sq ft mansion in Bel Air, LA, California. They had 3 children and got divorced in 2014.
- On 24th June 2017, Steven married Louise Linton, an actress. The ceremony was presided over by VP Mike Pence.
- Congressional Democrats have nicknamed Steven as ‘The Foreclosure King.’ He does not like it and has asked the congressmen/congresswomen to refrain from calling him so.
- Steven mother had invested with Bernie Madoff for many years. After her demise in 2005, her investments were liquidated by Steven and his brother. They got over $3 million from it. A trustee from Madoff subsequently sued them to get back the money, but the court ruled in favor of the Mnuchins.
- Steven used government aircraft for personal purposes. It was subsequently investigated.
- Dune Capital Management has invested in two projects of Donald Trump in the early 2000s. Trump later sued the company and an out of court settlement was reached.
- As a hedge fund manager, Steven often used offshore entities for purposes of investments. This practice was widely criticized, even though it is fairly common in the sector. Mnuchin has stated that he never used offshore entities so as to avoid paying taxes.
- As Secretary of Treasury, Steven has advocated reduction of corporate tax rates and supported tax reforms. He has also lent support to partial repealing of Dodd-Frank.
- After the 2017 voter registration investigation, it was found that Steven was registered to vote in New York as well as in California.
Steven Mnuchin – Salary and Net Worth
Mnuchin will receive an annual salary of $210,700 as a Level I employee. His net worth is estimated to be around $300 million to $400 million.
