Crypto News: Tom Steyer's private credit target

The private credit market stands at roughly $1.7 trillion, and investor interest in it is only intensifying. Venture debt is one area of the market that hasn't seen boom times, especially for clean-tech companies, following the 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Today's newsletter looks at how Tom Steyer's investment firm is jumping in to fill that gap. Plus, FEMA reinstated whistleblowers whom it had put on leave — only for the agency to reverse course hours later. Confused? Read on to get to the bottom of what's happening.

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Supply, meet demand

By Frances Schwartzkopff

The credit arm of Tom Steyer's asset management firm is targeting a niche corner of private dealmaking that's been on a different trajectory to the rest of the market.

Venture debt, whereby private credit gets channeled into startups, is bouncing back from the dent left by Silicon Valley Bank's 2023 failure, when such lending fell by a fifth. By contrast, the wider market for private credit has soared through such events, morphing into a multitrillion-dollar behemoth that's now a staple of retail investment portfolios.

Tom Steyer Photographer: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg

Chris Creed, who this year joined Steyer's Galvanize Climate Solutions as a managing partner after stepping down as chief investment officer of the US Department of Energy's loan program, says he's steering clear of most of the private market, but not venture debt.

The wider private credit market has been "booming," which raises questions about the robustness of covenants and pricing, Creed said in an interview. "We have nothing to do with that."

Instead, Creed says he and his team are focused on providing short-term loans of three to five years to startups, which he says is a model that can generate double-digit returns for investors. The idea is to provide the financial support needed to get a startup through early teething problems so it can access long-term financing. It's a market that struggled after SVB — a major lender to climate-tech startups — crashed more than 2 1/2 years ago.

Venture debt is a corner of the market in which there's generally been "a lack" of supply and a lot of demand, Creed said. All things being equal, that spells better returns for investors, he said.

Katie Hall Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

Steyer, who's long embraced capital allocations that favor low-carbon outcomes, is the co-founder of Galvanize together with Katie Hall. Last year, they were joined by Biden-era climate diplomat John Kerry. Steyer, whose net worth is estimated at $4.7 billion, announced in November that he was taking a leave of absence as co-chair as he runs for governor of California.

Galvanize moved into credit markets this year, targeting investments in strategies focused on the energy transition and climate resilience. The firm said in September the new strategy is anchored by a $1.3 billion investment from a "leading" institutional investor it didn't identify by name.

Creed says the focus of Galvanize's new program represents a "very small" corner of the total private credit market, which according to EY reached $3 trillion last year.

The idea is to target growth avenues shaped by an economic era more geared toward local production than to global trade, Creed said. "We're now squarely in an era of localization, and that's pretty bipartisan," he said.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com and subscribe to Green Daily for more free reads on billionaires' investments into clean tech and other climate themes.

A first in the making?

$87 billion

The amount Duke Energy needs to finance its capital plan. The utility has spoken with private credit providers to help raise funds. If it comes to fruition, it'd be a first for utilities.

A different scale

"Helping innovative companies clear the commercial valley of death will require us to think differently about capital."

Chuka Umunna

Head of ESG and green economy investment banking for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, JPMorgan Chase

Clean tech's unique needs require investors to take on a different mindset, Umunna said at last year's Bloomberg Sustainable Finance Forum in London.

FEMA's about face

By Lauren Rosenthal and Zahra Hirji

Days after reinstating a group of Federal Emergency Management Agency employees who raised concerns about the government's disaster preparedness, federal officials have placed those whistleblowers back on administrative leave.

The move came hours after CNN first reported the return to work of 14 staffers who had remained on paid leave since late August. Those workers were awaiting the results of an internal investigation into their participation in an open letter that criticized President Donald Trump's cuts to FEMA, which sits under the Department of Homeland Security.

Though FEMA had recently called the employees back to work, a DHS spokesperson said in a statement that the workers "were wrongly and without authorization reinstated by bureaucrats acting outside their authority," adding that "the unauthorized reinstatement was swiftly corrected by senior leadership" who returned the group to administrative leave.

A FEMA worker Photographer: Bing Guan/Bloomberg

"I've never seen a retraction on a retraction like this," said David Seide, a lawyer for the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, which is helping some workers press whistleblower complaints against FEMA with the federal Office of Special Counsel. "In my decades of experience in these spaces, I've never seen anything like this."

The reversal comes as FEMA staff await the final recommendations of an expert council that Trump convened to evaluate the agency's future. The council is expected to approve its final report at a meeting scheduled for Dec. 11.

Subscribe to Bloomberg News to stay up-to-date on what will happen to FEMA under the Trump administration.

Worth a listen

A cultural policy councilor with Brazil's Ministry of Culture at COP30 Photographer: Marina Calderon/Bloomberg

Last month, tens of thousands of people took to the city of Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon river, for the annual United Nations climate summit: COP30. Alongside tense negotiations, there were indigenous protests, daily rainstorms and even a fire at the COP venue. But at the end of it all, what did COP30 achieve? Bloomberg Green's Jennifer Dlouhy joins Akshat Rathi on Zero, to share her takeaways.

Listen now, and subscribe on Apple, Spotify or YouTube to get new episodes of Zero every Thursday.

More from Green

Jens Stoltenberg, Norway's finance minister Photographer: Simon Wohlfahrt/Bloomberg

Norway's ruling Labor Party is signaling no concessions on key demands by its two partners, the Socialist Left and the Green Party, as talks continue on next year's budget with an aim to avert a cabinet crisis.

The fossil-fuel-rich Nordic nation's politicians are seeking to avoid a full-blown government crisis after so far failing to ensure support from all of Labor's four center-left partners for the 2026 spending plan. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store has until Friday to try to win over the holdouts, or hope they will still back him in a confidence motion if his budget fails to pass in parliament.

The sticking point for the Socialist Left are Israeli holdings of the nation's $2.1 trillion wealth fund amid the war in Gaza, which it wants offloaded. Green Party leader Arild Hermstad says his group will not vote for the current budget proposal because it will lead to "higher CO2 emissions" — an existential question for his party. The Green Party has called for a halt of oil and gas exploration and a phasing out of production by 2040.

Read the full story on Bloomberg.com and subscribe for unlimited access.

A fast-moving storm has delayed flights across the US. New Yorkers face a slippery commute this morning and heavy snow is due upstate and in New England.

Vietnam's coffee crop is expected to be 10% higher than last season, despite bouts of heavy rain and widespread flooding delaying the harvest and causing $3 billion in losses.

Taiwan may restart one of its atomic power plants in 2028 if safety reviews proceed smoothly, a government minister said, in another sign the island may reverse its anti-nuclear policy.