Phillip Goldstein
Principal and Co-founder
Bulldog Investors
In 1992, after working twenty-five years as a civil engineer for the City of New York, Phillip Goldstein and his partner, Steve Samuels founded what is now Bulldog Investors, a value oriented group of hedge funds that invest primarily in closed-end funds, small cap operating companies and SPACs. Bulldog Investors began with $700,000 and currently has assets of approximately $500 million. It often employs investor activism to unlock the intrinsic value of its investments and attributes a record of not having had any losing years to its activist approach. Bulldog Investors has conducted approximately 30 proxy contests and several “hostile” tender offers.
Mr. Goldstein has served as a director of a number of closed-end funds and is currently a director of the Mexico Equity & Income Fund, ASA Limited and Brantley Capital Corporation. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1966 with a Bachelor of Engineering degree and from C.C.N.Y in 1968 with a Master of Engineering degree.
Mr. Goldstein is a widely-quoted expert on closed-end funds, hedge funds, value investing, investor activism, corporate governance and securities regulation. In 2006, Mr. Goldstein and Bulldog Investors succeeded in a legal challenge to invalidate the SEC’s controversial rule to register hedge funds. They have also challenged securities regulations that prohibit truthful non-misleading communication by companies and other market participants and are currently seeking to have a prohibition on unrestricted access to its website declared a violation of the First Amendment.