Phillip Goldstein (investor)

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Phillip Goldstein
Born
Brooklyn, New York
Alma mater University of Southern California City College of New York
OccupationCo-founder and partner, bulldog investors

Phillip "Phil" Goldstein is an American investor, former civil engineer, and manager of the hedge fund Bulldog Investors, known for its value-driven investment strategy, its activist investment campaigns and its focus on closed-end mutual funds. [1]

Contents

Early life and education

Goldstein was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1945. [1] He decided as a child that he wanted to become an engineer, when his patriotism was inspired by the launch of the Sputnik. [1] He attended the University of Southern California, earning a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in 1966. [2] He then returned to the East Coast to pursue a master's degree in engineering from the City College of New York, which he completed in 1968. [2]

Career

Goldstein spent the first 25 years of his career as a civil engineer for the City of New York, working on projects such as the maintenance and improvement of the Brooklyn Bridge's roadway. [2] In the 1970s he also used his proficiency with math in the game of blackjack, and even considered a career as a professional gambler until he came across a book, "How the Experts Beat the Market," by Thomas C. Noddings. In the book, Noddings, also a former engineer, explains how a mathematically inclined investor can uncover and profit from various market inefficiencies. [1]

Over time, this approach led Goldstein to employ the principal of value investing with a particular emphasis on closed-end funds, in his personal investing. [1] In 1989, he met former Dean Witter associate Steven Samuels at a conference on closed-end funds. Samuels introduced Goldstein to some potential investment clients, and in 1992 the two started Bulldog Investors with $700,000. [3] Andrew Dakos and Rajeev Das later joined as partners. [1]

By 1996, Goldstein and his partners decided to take a more activist approach to some of the fund's investing, [4] with a particular emphasis on liquidity events such as asset sales. [3]

In 2009, Goldstein and Bulldog Investors ran a proxy contest to elect a new board of directors to Insured Municipal Income Fund, [5] and later renamed it Special Opportunities Fund (NYSE: SPE). Special Opportunities Fund is now managed by Bulldog Investors, along with a group of private funds. [6]

Goldstein and Bulldog Investors remain value-centric, employing a variety of value-oriented investing strategies, and regularly investing in closed-end mutual funds when there is a significant gap between the fund's market value and its net asset value (NAV), or liquidation value. [4] Oftentimes the strategy then includes converting the fund to an open-ended one, or simply liquidating the funds' assets and returning them to shareholders. [7]

Board seats

Goldstein is a member of the board of directors of Imperial Holdings (NYSE :  IFT), the Mexico Equity and Income Fund (NYSE :  MXE), ASA Ltd. (NYSE :  ASA), the Special Opportunities Fund (NYSE :  SPE) and MVC Capital (NYSE :  MVC).[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

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A closed-end fund (CEF) or closed-ended fund is a collective investment model based on issuing a fixed number of shares which are not redeemable from the fund. Unlike open-end funds, new shares in a closed-end fund are not created by managers to meet demand from investors. Instead, the shares can be purchased and sold only in the market, which is the original design of the mutual fund, which predates open-end mutual funds but offers the same actively-managed pooled investments.

A mutual fund is an open-end professionally managed investment fund that pools money from many investors to purchase securities. These investors may be retail or institutional in nature. The term is typically used in the United States, Canada, and India, while similar structures across the globe include the SICAV in Europe and open-ended investment company (OEIC) in the UK.

An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of investment fund and exchange-traded product, i.e. they are traded on stock exchanges. ETFs are similar in many ways to mutual funds, except that ETFs are bought and sold throughout the day on stock exchanges. An ETF holds assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies, and/or commodities such as gold bars, and generally operates with an arbitrage mechanism designed to keep it trading close to its net asset value, although deviations can occasionally occur. Most ETFs are index funds, that is, they hold the same securities in the same proportions as a certain stock market index or bond market index. The most popular ETFs in the U.S. replicate the S&P 500 Index, the total market index, the NASDAQ-100 index, the price of gold, the "growth" stocks in the Russell 1000 Index, or the index of the largest technology companies. With the exception of non-transparent actively managed ETFs, in most cases, the list of stocks that each ETF owns, as well as their weightings, is posted daily on the website of the issuer. The largest ETFs have annual fees of 0.03% of the amount invested, or even lower, although specialty ETFs can have annual fees well in excess of 1% of the amount invested. These fees are paid to the ETF issuer out of dividends received from the underlying holdings or from selling assets.

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Jamie Dinan

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "The man who beat the SEC". CNNMoney. June 18, 2008. Archived from the original on October 18, 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 "Forbes panelist bio – Phillip Goldstein".
  3. 1 2 "Phil Goldstein of Bulldog Investors on Activist Investing: Interview". Market Folly. January 26, 2011.
  4. 1 2 "Investing with the Alpha Bulldog – An Interview With Hedge Fund Activist Phillip Goldstein Of Bulldog Investors". Seeking Alpha. June 12, 2013.
  5. "Why You Should Keep an Eye on the Special Opportunities Fund". Seeking Alpha. May 20, 2010.
  6. "Bulldog Investors Seeks Removal of Kevin Landis as Manager of Firsthand Technology Value Fund". The Motley Fool. May 29, 2013.
  7. "THE SHAKERS: 9 Badass Activist Investors And The Deals That Made Them Famous". Business Insider. January 25, 2012.