Hank Paulson’s TPG Climate Fund Raises $5.4 Billion

July 29, 2021 No Comments Markets

The revolving door between private sector Wall Street jobs and the Treasury and/or Fed continues…

Today’s installment is brought to you by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, who is now officially executive chairman of The TPG Rise Climate fund.

Just 6 months after Hank Paulson began his personal roadshow to try and drum up investor capital, TPG’s inaugural fund, focused on its “climate investing strategy”, has raised $5.4 billion from high profile investors like Allstate and Hartford Financial, Reuters reported this week. The fund’s investor base also includes the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and France’s AXA, the report notes.

TPG says the fund is “designed to expand the scope of commercially viable climate technologies”.

Recall, back in January 2021 we noted that Paulson was returning to Wall Street to run the new climate-focused investment fund. It marked Paulson’s first return to the private sector since leaving Goldman in 2006.

In January, the NYT wrote how Paulson was recruited to run the fund by none other than U2 frontman Bono:

This past fall, Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury secretary, got a call from Paul David Hewson, better known as Bono. The musician-activist-investor had an idea and “an ask”: Bono, who helped found TPG’s $5 billion Rise funds focused on “impact investing,” told Mr. Paulson that the investment firm wanted to create an even bigger platform to focus exclusively on combating climate change — and he wanted Mr. Paulson to run it.

Mr. Paulson, who has spent the last 12 years since leaving his post at the Treasury away from the private sector running his nonprofit institute and working on climate change initiatives, demurred.

“He told me, ‘My dance card is full,’” Bono said of the call. “I thought he’d be amazing,” Bono added, but said he’d been warned by Mr. Paulson’s associates, “There’s just no way.”

This week, after months of calls and meetings that followed with Jon Winkelried, TPG’s co-chief executive – Mr. Paulson’s friend and former colleague when he ran Goldman Sachs – Mr. Paulson will become the executive chairman of a new global fund, TPG Rise Climate.

But why tap Paulson for such a role? As it turns out, the former Treasury Secretary has dedicated himself to combating climate change via various nonprofits over the past decade or so. Paulson and TPG co-founder Jim Coulter said their goal with the fund is to “to make investments in climate that are as profitable as any other kind of investment.”

We commented back in January that we suspected “Paulson won’t have much trouble recruiting investors”. That looks to have been an accurate assessment. And just like that, Paulson has become the most important ESG investor in the world.

TPG has over $100 billion in AUM and is considering a public listing.

Hank Paulson’s TPG Climate Fund Raises $5.4 Billion

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