Paul Singer Biography

Paul Elliott Singer (born August 22, 1944) is the founder and CEO of hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation and The Paul E. Singer Foundation.

Education and early career

Singer grew up in a Jewish family in Tenafly, New Jersey, one of three children of a Manhattan pharmacist and a homemaker. He obtained his B.S. in psychology from the University of Rochester and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. In 1974, Singer accepted a job as an attorney in the real estate division of the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

Elliott Management Corporation

In 1977, Singer founded the hedge fund Elliott Associates L.P. with $1.3 million from various friends and family members. Elliott Management Corporation oversees Elliott Associates and Elliott International Limited, which together have more than $21 billion in assets under management. According to The Guardian, "Elliott's principal investment strategy is buying distressed debt cheaply and selling it at a profit or suing for full payment."

A 2012 CNN profile of Singer noted that losses sustained early in his career led to a "risk aversion that still guides his investing today. For example, he rarely uses leverage to juice returns." Thanks to his caution, "Elliott has had only two down years" since 1977, rising "4.2% in 2011, a year in which most hedge funds lost money." According to CNN, Singer focused from early times "on distressed assets," buying up bankrupt firms' debt and acquiring "a reputation for strong-arming his way to profit." Elliott has been involved "in most of the big post-crash restructurings, including Chrysler and auto parts supplier Delphi." Over Elliott's history, it has averaged 14 percent annual returns, compared with 10.8% for the S&P 500 stock index as a whole.

Comment on Bernanke

Business Insider reported on 30 January 2013 that Singer had given Ben Bernanke a "D" grade.

Warning to G-7 leaders

Fellow hedge fund manager Jim Chanos revealed in an August 2009 radio interview that he and Singer had met with G7 finance ministers in 2007 to warn them that the global financial system was increasingly unstable and approaching a catastrophe, with banks on the verge of sinking the global economy. They argued that decisive action was called for, but were met with indifference. Chanos's recounting of this episode sparked an uproar in Britain, where many were angry that Gordon Brown, who had been present at the meeting, had ignored the experts' warning.

Compuware

Forbes noted in December 2012 that Elliot Management had offered to purchase the software firm Compuware after having accumulated 8% of the company's stock. Elliott expressed the view that Compuware had great promise but had been underperforming under its current management.

Romney and Delphi

The Nation reported in October 2012 that Mitt Romney, thanks to Singer, had made a large profit from President Obama's bailout of the auto industry. Romney and his wife had invested at least $1 million with Elliott, which bought Delphi, a bankrupt auto-parts manufacturer which the U.S. Treasury had allowed GM to give at least $2.8 billion of funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The Nation estimated that the Romneys had consequently made at least $15.3 million. In a 2 November 2012 Huffington Post article, Carl Pope wrote that Singer had threatened to close Delphi "unless the taxpayer bailed it out" " thereby "holding General Motors and Chrysler hostage, because if Delphi shut down, the companies would lack steering columns and other essential parts." After receiving "a $7.3 billion bailout from the public," Singer moved 25,000 Delphi jobs to China. "Mitt Romney's investments in Singer's fund help make this loss of American jobs possible," maintained Pope.

Purchasing sovereign debts

In 1996, Elliott bought defaulted Peruvian debt for a reported $11.4 million, In 1998, a U.S. court ruled that one could not buy debt with the sole purpose of suing the debtor. Elliott won a $58 million judgment in 2000, when the ruling was overturned.

After Argentina defaulted on its debt in 2002, NML Capital, a unit of Elliott, refused to accept its offer to pay less than 30¢ on the dollar on debts that originally amounted to over $182 million but that Elliott assessed were then worth $2.3 billion.

In early October 2012, NML arranged for the seizure of an Argentinian naval vessel in Ghana, the ARA Libertad, in an effort to force Argentina to pay its debt. Argentina, however, refused to pay the debt, and shortly thereafter regained control of the ship and removed it from Ghanaian waters.

In a November 2012 piece in the Huffington Post, Argentina's Foreign Affairs Minister, Hector Timerman, harshly criticized Singer for attempting to collect on the debt. Calling Singer "the inventor of vulture funds," Timerman argued that the $127 million Singer had received from the Republic of Congo to settle a $400 million debt he had acquired for $10 million "should be going to build roads, schools and other poverty reduction programs."

In his investor letter for the fourth quarter of 2012, Singer described Argentina's response to the court's ruling as "defiant and acrimonious," saying that its dismissal of the ruling as "judicial colonialism" was "puzzling," given that Argentina had chosen "to submit itself to the jurisdiction of New York courts and to waive its sovereign immunity."

In February 2013, the U.S. appeals court heard Argentina's appeal in the NML case.

In March 2013, Argentina offered a new plan that was judged unlikely to be acceptable to the New York court. On August 23, 2013 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the lower cout's verdict and dismissed said plan.

Philanthropy

Paul Singer founded the Paul E. Singer Family Foundation, which supports many charitable projects including the Harvard Graduate School of Education Singer Prize for Excellence in Secondary Teaching and VH1 Save The Music Foundation, the Food Bank For New York City, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, and the New York City Police Foundation. In addition, Singer, whose gay son married his partner in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal, has donated $425,000 of his own money and raised another $500,000 to support the drive for legalization of gay marriage in New York, and in October 2012, Singer donated $250,000 to the Maryland Marriage Campaign.

Singer sponsors the University of Rochester Singer Prize for Excellence in Secondary Teaching, the Harlem Children's Zone, and the Success Charter Network. He also supports the Police Athletic League NYC and the NYC Police Foundation.

Singer has given over $14 million to a variety of military causes, including the Bob Woodruff Foundation, the Semper Fi Fund, the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, Spirit of America, the Navy Seal Foundation, The Mission Continues, and the Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation.

Gay rights

Singer, who has a gay son in Massachusetts, has contributed to gay-rights causes and same-sex marriage campaigns, and has also actively sought to persuade other conservatives to support gay marriage. He has joined other Wall Street executives in support of LGBT equality in the workplace as a means of retaining employees and improving overall business outcomes. He has said that same-sex marriage promotes "family stability" and said that in a time when "the institution of marriage in America has utterly collapsed," the fact that gay couples want to marry "is kind of a lovely thing and a cool thing and a wonderful thing."

In 2012, Singer provided $1 million to start a super PAC named American Unity PAC. According to the New York Times, the PAC's "sole mission will be to encourage Republican candidates to support same-sex marriage, in part by helping them to feel financially shielded from any blowback from well-funded groups that oppose it."

Board memberships

Singer is Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. He also serves on the Board of Fellows of Harvard Medical School and the Board of Directors of Commentary Magazine.

Singer is a member of the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation.

Political activity

Singer is an active participant in Republican Party politics. He was a major contributor to George W. Bush's presidential campaigns.

In 2007, Singer led a financial industry fund-raising effort for Rudolph Giuliani, first as regional finance chair and later as senior policy adviser.

In 2007, Singer provided $175,000 to support a petition drive for a proposed California initiative to apportion the state's 55 electoral votes by congressional district. At least 19 of the state's 53 congressional districts could be expected to vote for a GOP presidential candidate, enough to change the national results in a close election.

President George W. Bush appointed Singer to serve on the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.

In 2011, Singer played a major role in passing legislation that would allow same-sex marriage in the state of New York by, along with other major GOP donors, throwing his support behind it. In 2011, he donated $1 million to Restore Our Future Inc, the Superpac supporting Mitt Romney.

Lee Fang, writing for the progressive political blog ThinkProgress, claimed that "the rise of Singer's political profile can be traced to his work as a top donor to pro-Bush character-assasination (sic) groups like the Swift Boat Veterans."

In 2011, Singer donated $1 million to Restore Our Future, a political action committee (PAC) created to support Mitt Romney in the U.S. Presidential election. Singer was a major contributor to George W. Bush's presidential campaigns and was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May of 2008..

In 2012, Singer provided $1 million to start a super PAC named American Unity PAC. According to the New York Times, the PAC's "sole mission will be to encourage Republican candidates to support same-sex marriage, in part by helping them to feel financially shielded from any blowback from well-funded groups that oppose it."

Writings and commentary

Singer has written columns in the Wall Street Journal. In 2009, he wrote a piece titled, "Free-Marketeers Should Welcome Some Regulation," in which he argued that, "It's true that monetary policy was too lax for too long, and the government encouraged lending to people who were unlikely to repay their loans. But this crisis was primarily caused by managements and individuals throughout the financial system who exercised extremely poor judgment. The private sector, not the public sector, is where the biggest mistakes were made."

In August 2009, fellow hedge fund manager Jim Chanos said that he and Singer warned G7 finance ministers in 2007 that ?a systemic financial collapse could happen because major banks were creating ?radioactive' securitizations from things like subprime mortgages.

At a September 2006 financial conference in New York City, Singer delivered a speech called "Complexity Made Simple," advising that the purchase of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) was a serious mistake, anticipating the downturn of the housing market by nearly a year before the $770 billion taxpayer-funded bailout.

Personal life

Singer has been divorced since 1996. He lives on New York City's Upper West Side and also has a house in Aspen, Colorado.