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Michael Kipp Kranbuhl

Official · Treasury

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Type
Person
Role
Official · Treasury
Programs
Other programs
Updated
  • Pandemic-program role: Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets at Treasury, the senior Office-of-Financial-Markets seat over the office that ran Treasury's side of the CARES Act Title IV / Exchange Stabilization Fund support for the Federal Reserve's 13(3) emergency facilities, including the Main Street Lending Program SPV that the Boston Fed funded against Treasury's equity.
  • Institution · office: Treasury · Office of Domestic Finance, Office of Financial Markets — Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Financial Markets · Type: political (non-career SES, per the 2020 Plum Book)
  • Tenure (relief-relevant): at Treasury since spring 2017; Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets since approx. August 2019 through the end of the Trump administration (January 2021)

The job (role mechanics)

  • Level / appointment: Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary: a political appointment, non-career SES (the 2020 Plum Book lists the Financial Markets PDAS as a non-career position). A notch senior to a Deputy Assistant Secretary and the principal deputy to the Assistant Secretary, but SES-level, not an Executive Schedule / PAS office. Note: Kranbuhl was separately nominated (received by the Senate Oct. 15, 2019; Finance Committee hearing Feb. 5, 2020) to the Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets post (a PAS, Executive Schedule role) vacated by Matthew Rutherford; he served as the Principal Deputy (performing the role) but the PAS confirmation is a distinct matter.
  • Reports to: the Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets (the post was vacant/being filled in this period, so the Principal Deputy effectively led the office), and up through the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance and the Secretary. Kranbuhl described himself as a member of the Secretary's senior staff.
  • Core responsibility: The Office of Financial Markets covers federal debt management and the financing of the federal government (Treasury's "original purpose"), federal finance, capital markets, public finance, housing finance / GSE policy, and financial-market stability. In Kranbuhl's own testimony the office works with "Treasury's teams from the Offices of Federal Finance, Capital Markets, and Public Finance" and is "responsible for the financing of the Federal Government and the management and issuance of Federal debt."
  • Pay: A non-career SES position per the 2020 Plum Book; his pay is not in a first-party document.
  • Expectations / mandate: lead the day-to-day operations that keep the federal government financed at lowest cost to the taxpayer; advise on capital-markets, housing-finance/GSE, and financial-stability policy; in 2020 this expanded to standing up and overseeing Treasury's participation in the emergency lending facilities.
  • Tenure norm: Serves at the pleasure of the administration; political appointees of this type leave at a change of administration.

Who they are

Michael Kipp Kranbuhl, known professionally as Kipp Kranbuhl, is a career financial-markets and private-equity professional who spent roughly two decades in investment banking and private-equity/credit investing before joining Treasury in 2017.

Education

  • A.B. in political science and economics, Duke University (per his SIFMA bio and Senator Portman's introduction at the nomination hearing).
  • M.B.A., University of Michigan (per his SIFMA bio and Senator Portman's introduction at the nomination hearing).

Career before

  • ~22 years in the financial markets and securities industry prior to / spanning his Treasury service (his own testimony: "For the past 22 years I have worked in the financial markets and securities industry").
  • Early career in investment banking at Wheat First Butcher Singer / First Union Securities (per his SIFMA biography).
  • Private equity and credit investing at Gladstone (Gladstone Management / Gladstone Investment Corporation) and Petra Capital Partners, leading control-equity and debt investments in leveraged buyouts of small-to-mid-sized industrial, manufacturing, and services businesses, and serving on portfolio-company boards (per SIFMA and secondary bios).

Role in the pandemic relief programs

  • Office of Financial Markets and the CARES Act Title IV / ESF facilities. Kranbuhl led the Office of Financial Markets within Domestic Finance during 2020. That office handled Treasury's side of the CARES Act Title IV support for the Federal Reserve's Section 13(3) emergency lending facilities, funded through the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF). Title IV appropriated up to $500 billion through the ESF to backstop the Fed's facilities (corporate-credit, municipal, ABS/TALF, and Main Street). This is the Treasury policy-and-operations home for the relief programs' capital-markets/lending-facility leg (as distinct from the SBA-run PPP/EIDL grant-and-loan programs).
  • Main Street Lending Program (MSLP) SPV equity. Under the MSLP, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston lent to the Main Street SPV (MS Facilities LLC) against a Treasury equity investment made from the ESF; the SPV's wind-down has since returned Treasury equity (for example, $2.5 billion on May 17, 2024, per the Boston Fed's program page). The Office of Financial Markets was Treasury's responsible office for this equity/facility relationship.
  • Housing finance / GSEs. Separately (and before the pandemic year), Kranbuhl was involved in Treasury's September 2019 housing-finance reform plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as discussed in his nomination-hearing Q&A.

Documents written or signed

No relief-era public document we have is authored or signed by Kranbuhl individually; the Treasury–Fed facility agreements and the MS Facilities LLC documents are executed at the office or Secretary level.

Career after / where they are now

  • Kranbuhl left Treasury at the January 2021 change of administration. His Assistant Secretary nomination, reported favorably by the Finance Committee on March 11, 2020, was never voted on by the full Senate and was returned to the President on January 3, 2021.
  • He subsequently moved to Citi, where he is Global Head of Regulatory Strategy and Policy (per his SIFMA bio).

Sources held in this archive

Original source documents and archived captures

Sources (first-party)

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