Paul Singer

Lore & Background

Singer's career began in 1974 as an attorney in the real estate division of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. In 1977, he left law to create his own investment company using a convertible arbitrage "winning formula." According to The Telegraph in 2011, Elliott is "one of the oldest hedge funds on Wall Street." Singer is also founder and CEO of NML Capital Limited, a Cayman Islands-based offshore unit of Elliott Management.

In 2009, The Guardian reported that Singer "through a brilliantly complex financial manoeuvre, took control of Delphi Automotive," ultimately resulting in the US Treasury paying billions from its auto bailout fund to Delphi's creditors, though the specific attribution of a $12.9 billion figure to Singer alone is speculative and not a confirmed historical fact. In May 2014, the French Financial Markets Regulator fined Elliott a record €14 million (approximately $19 million at 2014 exchange rates) for insider trading, which the company appealed.

In 2015, Samsung published cartoons of Singer as an anthropomorphic vulture on its corporate website during a dispute over a merger between Samsung and Cheil Industries; the cartoons were denounced as antisemitic and Samsung later pulled them.

Reader's Guide

Singer's Elliott Management focuses on activist campaigns, taking equity stakes in companies and agitating using influence and voting rights to encourage change. They have also expanded into private equity. Termed a "specialist in activism in technology companies" by The Wall Street Journal in June 2015, Elliott pursued "more than 40 campaigns aimed at tech companies" between 2004 and 2015, according to Reuters. After Elliott took a stake in Twitter, Singer pushed to oust Jack Dorsey and control four board seats after Dorsey announced he would move to Africa; a deal gave Elliott a seat on the board and left Dorsey as CEO.

Singer's political activities include financial support for LGBTQ rights, funding for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, strong opposition to raising taxes for the wealthiest 1 percent, and opposition to aspects of the Dodd-Frank Act. He is active in Republican Party politics, and he and others affiliated with Elliott Management are collectively "the top source of contributions" to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Singer is also an active and ardent Zionist who has used his influence to outsource American high-tech jobs to Israel.

On February 1, 2020, weeks before many Americans had heard of COVID-19, Singer wrote a memo to employees about preparing for the possibility of being quarantined for at least a month.

Did You Know?

• Singer graduated from the University of Rochester with a B.S. in psychology in 1966 before receiving a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1969.
• In October 2012, Singer arranged for a Ghanaian court order to detain an Argentine naval vessel in a Ghanaian port to force debt payment.