Carson Block | |
---|---|
Born | April 27, 1977 |
Alma mater | University of Southern California Chicago-Kent College of Law |
Occupation | Investor |
Known for | founder of Muddy Waters Research |
Title | Founder, CEO, & CIO of Muddy Waters Capital LLC |
Website | muddywaterscapital |
Carson Block is an American investor and the founder of Muddy Waters Research. [1] He is known for documenting and alleging fraudulent accounting practices in publicly traded Chinese companies. [2]
Block grew up in Summit, New Jersey. He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California and holds a J.D. degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law. [3]
Block went to work with his father, a period he describes as “very embittering” as he was “lied to by a parade of management” of internet companies. He quit equity analysis for law school, later moving to Shanghai before leaving law and setting up a self-storage business in 2007. [4]
In 2011, Block was ranked as a 50 Most Influential Thinker by Bloomberg Markets. [5]
In September 2017, Block initiated a private lawsuit against Equifax, accusing the latter of neglecting to safeguard his personally identifiable information. [6] He appears in the documentary The China Hustle, outlining his research into securities fraud of Chinese companies through Muddy Waters. [7] In early 2018, he was also forced to settle a case with St. Jude Medical Inc. in order to avoid a lawsuit. [8]
Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial, software, data, and media company headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was co-founded by Michael Bloomberg in 1981, with Thomas Secunda, Duncan MacMillan, Charles Zegar, and a 12% ownership investment by Bank of America through its brokerage subsidiary Merrill Lynch.
TransUnion LLC is an American consumer credit reporting agency. TransUnion collects and aggregates information on over one billion individual consumers in over thirty countries including "200 million files profiling nearly every credit-active consumer in the United States". Its customers include over 65,000 businesses. Based in Chicago, Illinois, TransUnion's 2014 revenue was US$1.3 billion. It is the smallest of the three largest credit agencies, along with Experian and Equifax.
Equifax Inc. is an American multinational consumer credit reporting agency headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and is one of the three largest consumer credit reporting agencies, along with Experian and TransUnion. Equifax collects and aggregates information on over 800 million individual consumers and more than 88 million businesses worldwide. In addition to credit and demographic data and services to business, Equifax sells credit monitoring and fraud prevention services directly to consumers.
James Steven Chanos is an American investment manager. He is president and founder of Kynikos Associates, a New York City registered investment advisor focused on short selling. A noted art collector, he appeared on the BBC Four documentary The Banker's Guide to Art.
Olam International is an agri-business company, operating in 60 countries and supplying food and industrial raw materials to over 20,900 customers worldwide, placing them among the world's largest suppliers of cocoa beans, coffee, cotton and rice. Its value chain includes farming, origination, processing and distribution operations, child labor, and allegedly even child slavery.
Sino-Forest Corporation (Sino-Forest) (TSX: TRE) claimed at one time to be one of the leading commercial forest plantation operators in China. In 2011, the company was accused of fraud and found itself under investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Ontario Securities Commission. On March 30, 2012 Sino-Forest filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada. It also announced that the company would be sold or restructured, with the proceeds going to its creditors. On July 13, 2017, the OSC released its decision finding that Sino-Forest and four individuals, including former CEO Allen Chan, committed fraud.
China Metal Recycling (Holdings) Limited was a company the largest recycler of scrap metal in Mainland China by revenue. Based in Guangzhou, Guangdong, it was mainly engaged in collecting scrap steel, scrap copper and other scrap metals and processing them using equipment to produce recycled scrap metals for its customers. Its recycling facilities were located in Guangdong, Jiangsu and Hong Kong. The company was wound up and de-listed after accounting fraud surfaced.
Andrew Edward Left is an activist short seller, author and editor of the online investment newsletter Citron Research, formerly StockLemon.com. Under the name Citron Research, Left publishes reports on firms that he claims are overvalued or are engaged in fraud. Left is known for advising investors on short selling and has often appeared on various media outlets such as CNBC and Bloomberg to talk about his opinions on stocks. In 2017, Left was called 'The Bounty Hunter of Wall Street' by The New York Times. Left gained further notoriety following his announced short of GameStop, precipitating a short squeeze that has hurt him and other short sellers in the short term.
Muddy Waters Research LLC is an American privately held due diligence based investment firm that conducts investigative research on public companies while also taking investment positions that reflect their research. It has exposed accounting problems and fraud at several companies, primarily in China but also in other countries in Asia, Europe and North America.
Burford Capital is a financial services company that provides specialized finance to the legal market. Founded in 2009, it offers financing to corporate legal departments and law firms engaged in litigation and arbitration, asset recovery and other legal finance and advisory activities. It operates internationally with headquarters in Guernsey.
Dan David is an American investor, activist short-seller and whistle-blower. He is the founder of New York-based Wolfpack Research, a financial research and due diligence investigation firm that was started in 2019 with support from short-seller Muddy Waters Research. In the fall of 2017, David and his work as a whistle-blower and China expert were the focus of the documentary film The China Hustle, which depicts how fraudulent Chinese companies stole billions of dollars from U.S. investors and retirees. In 2018, David was the Republican candidate for congress in Pennsylvania's 4th Congressional District, which includes Montgomery and Berks counties. He is the host of the "I Hung Up On Warren Buffett" podcast.
The China Hustle is a 2017 finance documentary produced by Magnolia Pictures and directed by Jed Rothstein. The documentary reveals systematic and formulaic decades-long securities fraud by Chinese companies listed on the US stock market.
Between May and July 2017, American credit bureau Equifax was breached. Private records of 147.9 million Americans along with 15.2 million British citizens and about 19,000 Canadian citizens were compromised in the breach, making it one of the largest cybercrimes related to identity theft. Equifax discovered the breach end of July, but did not disclose it to the public until September 2017. In a settlement with the United States Federal Trade Commission, Equifax offered affected users settlement funds and free credit monitoring.
Chinese reverse mergers within the United States are accountable for 85% of all foreign reverse mergers in the early 21st century. A reverse merger, also known as a reverse takeover, is where a private company acquires a publicly traded firm or "shell company" that has essentially zero value on a registered stock exchange.
Luckin Coffee Inc. is a Chinese coffee company and coffeehouse chain. It was founded in Beijing in 2017. As of March 2023, it managed 9,351 stores which include 6,310 self-operated stores and 3,041 partnership stores. Monthly active customer numbers reached 500 million in June 2022. On 18 July 2024, the total Luckin coffee store number reached 20,000. The company operates shops, stores, and kiosks that offer coffee, tea, and food. Customers need to download an app to order and pay for drinks online. Luckin is currently headquartered in Xiamen. Luckin Coffee quickly expanded over the years and outnumbered the number of Starbucks stores in China by 2019.
TSLAQ is a loose, international collective of largely anonymous short-sellers, skeptics, and researchers who openly criticize Tesla, Inc. and its CEO Elon Musk. The group primarily organizes on social media, often using the $TSLAQ cashtag, and on Reddit to coordinate efforts and share news, opinions, and analysis about the company and its stock. Edward Niedermeyer, in his book Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors (2019), pinpoints the July 2018 doxxing of Twitter user Lawrence Fossi, a Seeking Alpha writer and Tesla short seller operating under the pseudonym Montana Skeptic, as the catalyst for the formation of TSLAQ.
In January 2021, a short squeeze of the stock of the American video game retailer GameStop and other securities took place, causing major financial consequences for certain hedge funds and large losses for short sellers. Approximately 140 percent of GameStop's public float had been sold short, and the rush to buy shares to cover those positions as the price rose caused it to rise even further. The short squeeze was initially and primarily triggered by users of the subreddit r/wallstreetbets, an Internet forum on the social news website Reddit, although a number of hedge funds also participated. At its height, on January 28, the short squeeze caused the retailer's stock price to reach a pre-market value of over US$500 per share, nearly 30 times the $17.25 valuation at the beginning of the month. The price of many other heavily shorted securities and cryptocurrencies also increased.
Citadel Securities LLC is an American market making firm providing liquidity and trade execution to retail and institutional clients, headquartered in Miami. The firm also trades futures, equities, credit, options, currencies, and Treasury bonds. It is the largest designated market maker on the New York Stock Exchange.
Hindenburg Research LLC is a U.S. investment research firm with a focus on activist short-selling founded by Nathan Anderson in 2017. Named after the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, which they characterize as a human-made avoidable disaster, the firm generates public reports via its website that allege corporate fraud and malfeasance. Companies that have been the subjects of their reports include Super Micro Computer, Adani Group, Nikola, Clover Health, Block, Inc., Kandi, and Lordstown Motors. These reports also feature defenses of the practice of short-selling and explanations of how short-sells can "play a critical role in exposing fraud and protecting investors."
Joshua Mitts is an American legal scholar. He is associate professor of law and Milton Handler Fellow at Columbia Law School. He is known for his research into short activism and its alleged market abuses.