Paul Singer

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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.

In Their Own Story

In the early 1990s, Singer began purchasing sovereign debt from nations in or near default. In 1996, Elliott bought defaulted Peruvian debt for $11.4 million. Elliott won a $58 million judgment and Peru had to repay in full under the pari passu rule. When former president Alberto Fujimori was attempting to flee the country due to human rights abuses and corruption, Singer confiscated his jet and offered to let him leave in exchange for the $58 million payment. Fujimori accepted. In the 1990s, the Kensington International division purchased $30 million of "Congolese sovereign debt... allegedly for less than $20 million" and spent years pursuing payment through the courts, settling in 2008 for an undisclosed amount. After Argentina defaulted in 2002, NML Capital refused to accept less than 30 cents per dollar. Singer arranged for a Ghanaian court order to detain an Argentine naval vessel in October 2012, but the seizure was barred by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. In February 2016, Argentina reached an agreement with Singer. In July 2018, Singer became owner of Italian football club AC Milan after the previous owner defaulted on a $37 million loan payment owed to Elliott Management, which had loaned $400 million to help purchase the club.

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 2015, Samsung published cartoons of Singer as an anthropomorphic vulture on its corporate website, which were denounced as antisemitic and later pulled.
• Elliott Management obtained a court order to seize former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori's jet as part of a debt collection campaign, but the specific exchange of the jet for a $58 million payment is not supported b
• In October 2012, Singer arranged for a Ghanaian court order to detain an Argentine naval vessel in a Ghanaian port to force debt payment.
• On February 1, 2020, Singer wrote a memo to employees about preparing for the possibility of being quarantined for at least a month due to COVID-19, weeks before many Americans had heard of it.