Steven Terner Mnuchin Bio
Steven Terner Mnuchin is an American investment banker and film producer who served as the 77th United States Secretary of the Treasury from 2017 to 2021 under President Donald Trump. A member of the Republican Party, he was a senior member of Trump’s first-term cabinet and one of the few high-profile officials the president did not dismiss during that term. Before entering government, he built a long career on Wall Street and in Hollywood, including seventeen years at Goldman Sachs and the founding of several hedge funds and a film-financing company.
Born in New York City in 1962, Mnuchin graduated from Yale University in 1985 and rose to become a partner at Goldman Sachs. He later led the purchase and reorganization of the failed lender IndyMac into OneWest Bank, financed major films through Dune Entertainment, and served as national finance chairman for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Early Life and Background
Steven Terner Mnuchin was born on December 21, 1962, in New York City, the second-youngest son in his family. He is the son of Robert E. Mnuchin of Washington, Connecticut, and Elaine Terner Cooper of New York. His father was a partner at Goldman Sachs in charge of equity trading and a member of the firm’s management committee, and later founded the Mnuchin Gallery in New York City. His great-grandfather, Aaron Mnuchin, a Russian-born diamond dealer who later resided in Belgium, emigrated to the United States in 1916.
Mnuchin attended the Riverdale Country School in New York City for his secondary education. He went on to graduate from Yale University in 1985 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. At Yale, he was the publisher of the Yale Daily News and was initiated into the Skull and Bones society in 1985. While a student, he drove a Porsche and lived at the Taft Hotel in New Haven. His first job was as a trainee at the investment bank Salomon Brothers in the early 1980s, while he was still studying at Yale.
Path to US Politics
For most of his career, Steven Terner Mnuchin was active in politics only as a donor. Between 1995 and 2014, he contributed more than $120,000 to political organizations, political action committees, politicians, and parties. He gave 11 donations to Republican candidates and 36 to Democratic candidates, including contributions to the campaigns of Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Mitt Romney. Mnuchin later said most of those donations were favors for friends.
His path into formal political work began in 2016, when he joined Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and was named National Finance Chairman. Earlier in 2016, he had donated $4,000 to Democrats Kamala Harris and Michael Wildes, and between June and September of that year he gave more than $400,000 to the Republican Party, including donations to Paul Ryan and Donald Trump. On November 30, 2016, Trump announced that he would nominate Mnuchin to be the next Secretary of the Treasury.
Steven Terner Mnuchin Career
Early Career (1985–2002)
Steven Terner Mnuchin began his Wall Street career in 1985 at Goldman Sachs, the same firm where his father had worked since 1957. He started in the mortgage department and became a partner at the firm in 1994. Over the next several years, he held a series of senior roles, including head of the mortgage department, co-head of the Fixed Income, Currencies, and Commodities (FICC) division, and Chief Information Officer. His work on mortgage-related products gave him deep exposure to the housing market well before the 2008 financial crisis.
Mnuchin left Goldman Sachs in 2002 after 17 years with the firm, at which point he was estimated to have received about $46 million in company stock along with $12.6 million in compensation in the months prior to his departure. His time at Goldman cemented his standing as a senior figure in American investment banking and provided the network of contacts that supported his later ventures in hedge funds, private equity, and film finance.
Hedge Funds and Film Production (2002–2016)
After leaving Goldman Sachs, Steven Terner Mnuchin briefly served as vice-chairman of ESL Investments, the hedge fund run by his Yale roommate Edward Lampert. From 2003 to 2004, he worked as Chief Executive Officer of SFM Capital Management, a fund backed by George Soros. In 2004, he founded Dune Capital Management with two former Goldman partners, naming the firm after a spot near his house in The Hamptons. The firm invested in at least two Donald Trump projects, including the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Honolulu and the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.
Mnuchin also built a significant presence in Hollywood. In 2004, he founded Dune Entertainment, which financed a number of large-budget films for 20th Century Fox, including entries in the X-Men film franchise and Avatar. In 2012, after Dune’s deal with 20th Century Fox ended, he merged the company with Brett Ratner and James Packer’s RatPac Entertainment to form RatPac-Dune Entertainment, which signed a financing deal with Warner Bros. Between 2013 and 2018, RatPac-Dune financed many films for the studio, including American Sniper and Mad Max: Fury Road. He was also co-chairman of Relativity Media but resigned about seven months before that company went bankrupt, reportedly because of a potential conflict of interest with his duties at OneWest.
OneWest Bank Era (2009–2015)
In 2009, a group led by Steven Terner Mnuchin purchased IndyMac, a California-based residential lender that had been placed in receivership by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and held $23.5 billion in commercial loans, mortgages, and mortgage-backed securities. The purchase price reflected a $4.7 billion discount to book value. His investor group included George Soros, hedge-fund manager John Paulson, former Goldman Sachs executive J. Christopher Flowers, and Dell founder Michael Dell. After the deal closed, Mnuchin renamed the bank OneWest Bank and moved into a large house in Bel Air to begin his tenure as chief executive officer and chairman.
OneWest then bought several other failed banks, including First Federal Bank of California in 2009 and La Jolla Bank in 2010, and later acquired a portfolio belonging to Citi Holdings for $1.4 billion. The bank became profitable within a year under Mnuchin’s leadership and grew into the largest bank in Southern California, with about $27 billion in assets. In 2015, Mnuchin sold OneWest to CIT Group for $3.4 billion and joined CIT’s board of directors, a position he held until resigning in December 2016 to prepare for his nomination as Treasury Secretary. OneWest was later criticized for aggressively foreclosing on homeowners, and a leaked internal memo from the California attorney general’s office described more than a thousand violations of foreclosure law during Mnuchin’s tenure, though no civil enforcement suit was filed.
Treasury Secretary Era (2017–2021)
Steven Terner Mnuchin was confirmed by the United States Senate as the 77th Secretary of the Treasury on February 13, 2017, by a vote of 53–47. He served in that role for nearly a full presidential term, from 2017 to 2021. As Treasury Secretary, he was a leading advocate for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, supported reducing both personal and corporate tax rates, and pushed for a partial repeal of the Dodd–Frank Act, citing the complexity of the existing regulations. He was also a member of the so-called “Big Six,” a group of lawmakers and administration officials convened to write the tax reform proposal.
During his tenure, Mnuchin announced sanctions against the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center in 2017, against the Bank of Dandong in China for facilitating North Korean access to the U.S. financial system, and in 2018 unveiled a series of sanctions against Russian entities and individuals under CAATSA and Executive Order 13694. He supported the Trump administration’s policy of economic protectionism at the March 2017 meeting of G-20 finance ministers and, beginning in November 2019, facilitated negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan over the filling and operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. He was one of several cabinet officials who discussed invoking the Twenty-fifth Amendment to remove President Trump from office following the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, and he later confirmed he was aware of those discussions.
Notable Events and Milestones
One signature moment from Steven Terner Mnuchin’s tenure was a 2017 photograph of him and his wife Louise Linton holding up a sheet of new one-dollar bills during a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which drew wide mockery on the internet and became a viral meme. His Treasury Department was also the subject of an Office of Inspector General inquiry into his use of government aircraft, including a request for a military jet for his honeymoon in Europe. The inspector general ultimately concluded there was “no violation of law” in his requests and uses of government aircraft, but raised concerns about the standard of proof applied to his travel requests.
Steven Terner Mnuchin Career Wins
Steven Terner Mnuchin’s career includes several major financial and policy wins. As Treasury Secretary, he shepherded the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 into law and oversaw a broad package of sanctions actions against foreign individuals and entities. In the private sector, he took IndyMac from FDIC receivership to a $3.4 billion sale to CIT Group in just six years, while building Dune Entertainment and RatPac-Dune into significant film-financing operations for major Hollywood studios.
OneWest Bank Highlights
Steven Terner Mnuchin’s most prominent private-sector win was the 2009 acquisition of IndyMac from the FDIC, its reorganization into OneWest Bank, and the 2015 sale of OneWest to CIT Group for $3.4 billion. By the time of the sale, OneWest had become the largest bank in Southern California, with about $27 billion in assets, and Mnuchin owned an estimated $97 million in CIT Group stock as of August 2016. The transaction remains a defining example of a post-crisis distressed bank purchase.
Other Wins and Achievements
Beyond banking, Steven Terner Mnuchin achieved significant success in film finance through Dune Entertainment and RatPac-Dune Entertainment, backing major studio releases for 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. As Treasury Secretary, he helped deliver the 2017 tax reform package and rolled out multiple rounds of sanctions against targets in Syria, North Korea, and Russia. After leaving government, he founded Liberty Strategic Capital, which led a 2024 group of investors including Hudson Bay and Reverence Capital in committing more than $1 billion to NYCB, and he also announced in 2024 that he was assembling an investor group to purchase TikTok.
Steven Terner Mnuchin Family
Family Background and Banking Lineage
Steven Terner Mnuchin was born into a family with deep ties to Wall Street and the arts. His father, Robert E. Mnuchin, was a longtime partner at Goldman Sachs in charge of equity trading and a member of the firm’s management committee, and later founded the Mnuchin Gallery in New York City. His mother, Elaine Terner Cooper, was a long-time investor with Bernie Madoff; after her death in early 2005, Steven and his brother liquidated her investments for $3.2 million. His great-grandfather, Aaron Mnuchin, was a Russian-born diamond dealer who emigrated to the United States from Belgium in 1916.
Personal Life
Steven Terner Mnuchin was married to Kathryn Leigh McCarver from 1992 to 1999. In 1999, he married Heather deForest Crosby, with whom he had three children; the couple divorced in 2014. After buying IndyMac, he moved into a large house in Bel Air, Los Angeles, to be closer to OneWest’s headquarters in Pasadena. On June 24, 2017, he married actress Louise Linton, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding over the ceremony. In 2023, Linton had a daughter with Mnuchin. The family resides in Bel Air, Los Angeles, California.