AB32 and Proposition 23

Tom Steyer Bio:

Tom Steyer is a successful asset manager and entrepreneur.   He founded and is Co-Managing Partner of the San Francisco-based hedge fund Farallon Capital Management and is a partner at the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman, also in San Francisco.  With his wife Kat Taylor, he created and funded OneCalifornia Bank, based in Oakland, which provides loans and banking services to underserved small businesses, communities, and individuals in California.

Steyer is also co-Chair, with former Secretary of State George Shultz, of the campaign to oppose Proposition 23 in California, an initiative that would undercut California’s commitment to clean energy.

Steyer was born in New York City in 1957.  He has a BA from Yale and an MBA from Stanford.  He began his career in finance in New York and worked for two years in the early 1980s for Goldman Sachs.  Steyer moved to the Bay area in 1986 to marry his wife, Bay area native Kat Taylor, and raise his family here.  He first joined Hellman and Freidman, and then founded Farallon in San Francisco in March 1986. 

An avid Californian, Steyer has worked to promote economic development and environmental protection in the state.  For the past five years, the OneCalifornia Bank and Foundation have been increasing activities promoting economic opportunities for struggling small businesses, communities, and individuals.  Most recently, OneCalfornia acquired the West Coast operations of ShoreBank.  Through an innovative structure, any eventual profits from the bank will go directly to the not for profit foundation.

Steyer is on the Board of Trustees of Stanford University; two years ago, he and Taylor founded a renewable energy research center there.  Steyer is a leading Democratic activist and fundraiser, and an active participant in national and international policy discussions.  He has joined with Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in agreeing to donate more than half his wealth to charity during his lifetime.

Steyer and his wife have four children between 16 and 22 years of age. 

George P. Shultz Summary Bio:

George P. Shultz is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He was sworn in on July 16, 1982, as the sixtieth U.S. secretary of state and served until January 20, 1989. In January 1989, he rejoined Stanford University as the Jack Steele Parker Professor of International Economics at the Graduate School of Business and as a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution

Background Reading:

The Terminator vs. Big Oil by Thomas Friedman