IT’S MNUCHIN FOR TREASURY: Steven Mnuchin, Expected Treasury Pick, Is an Outsider to Public Policy.

He started his career at Goldman Sachs, where his father, Robert, was a legendary trader. He then worked for his Yale roommate, the hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, who runs Sears Holdings, and later for George Soros, before striking out on his own — with the backing of Mr. Soros — to start Dune Capital Management.

He has spent much of the last decade on the West Coast, where his firm bought IndyMac, a bankrupt housing lender, in 2009 from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and rebuilt it under the name OneWest before selling it for an enormous profit to the CIT Group in 2015.

Along the way, he also developed a side business as a financier of many Hollywood hits. His name regularly appears in the credits of films. Just in the past year, he produced “Sully,” “Storks,” “The Legend of Tarzan” and “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

Mr. Mnuchin is known as a smart, hard-working, talented executive. Henry M. Paulson Jr., the former Treasury secretary who was critical of Mr. Trump during the campaign, was very complimentary of Mr. Mnuchin’s performance at Goldman Sachs.

North Carolina banking CEO and former Cato chief John Allison would have been a bolder pick.