Please . David well, people wouldnt recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. Just leave it this way. Alright. David i dont consider myself a journalist. And nobody else would consider myself a journalist. I began to take on the life of being an interviewer even though i have a day job of running a private equity firm. How do you define leadership . What is it that makes somebody tick . I read the other day that you opened your fund for 24 hours and 5 billion showed up, so how. Now how does somebody raise 5 billion in 24 hours . Paul it was not exactly true. David oh. Paul it was true in the sense that once the offering was open, because it was first come, first served, there was a lot of demand. And 23 hours later, it was filled up, but it took a number of months of preparation. David that makes me feel better that you didnt just do it in 24 hours. How much do you manage now overall . Paul i think its 34 billion at this point. David so you started your fund in what year . Paul 1977. David how much money did you have then . Paul 1. 3 million. David where did you get that . Paul it was friends and family. I was a practicing lawyer, and in early 1977, i decided that what i had been doing managing a small amount of a tiny amount of friends and family money was much more interesting than practicing law. David you grew up in new jersey and manhattan and you went to the university of rochester, and then harvard law school. Paul right. It was a wonderful experience, but a daunting experience, especially because i did not exactly like what i was doing. David but you went to practice law in new york. Paul in the absence of a better idea. David ok, so i practiced law in new york initially as well, and i practiced law in washington paul sad to hear it. [laughter] david when i gave up the practice of law to go in business, my mother said, you went to law school. What are you going to do . You do not know anything about business. What did your mother say when you said, i am going to give up the practice of law . She said what . Paul can you earn a living . [laughter] david so you started, and you work out of your apartment. What was the strategy that you used to get off of the ground . Paul a tiny bit of context. My dad was a retail pharmacist , and after i started attending law school he said, you have to learn how to be an investor. He and i traded tiny amounts of tech stocks and mining stocks together. 2000 of this or 5,000 of this, so i became very interested in markets and in trading. And in the period of time from 19671968 through 1974, he and i found just about every possible way conceivable to lose money. [laughter] paul and so when i started elliott in 1977, i was determined to engage in a trading strategy that made money all the time. And so for the first 10 years or so of elliotts existence, the primary strategy was convertible bond hedging. Buy the bond, short the stock, it had a strong positive carry and trading profits. I practiced it on low leverage and it did the job. The job meaning a consistent return, making more money more or less over time. David when did you realize you were better than the average guy getting these or doing these kinds of things . Paul i never thought of it that way. I was completely determined to just make a rate of return. Really recapture my Parents Money that i had lost previously. And keep finding ways to pursue that goal of absolute return at a time when convertibles were becoming more quantified, more leveraged, and more competitive. David the core of what you do, you call it a macro fund, or a value fund. What would you describe your investment technique . Paul some people call what we do multistrategy, others call it absolute return. The idea of our portfolio mix is to try to make money as close as possible to all the time. What we have done over the years in pursuit of that goal as vanilla convertible hedging became uninteresting was add other ways of generating absolute return to the mix. For example, we i came to feel and part of it was my experience as a lawyer, that manual activities, trading manual effort for risk, was a good way to add value or and also control risk. That is why bankruptcy, distressed securities, became our largest capital deployment. And that is why in recent years equity activism has become a very important capital deployment. David that is an important part of what you do now. What you call equity activism. There are a couple that are very wellknown. Let me talk about one that is famous all over the world. You bought some bonds from argentina. You may remember this. And you held onto them for a long time and pursued them in the courts and so forth and ultimately reached a settlement favorable for investors. Was it hard to hold on that long . Paul it was not hard to hold on in a portfolio sense because at no time until the current government came into office, i believe in december 2015, at no time before that did the previous two governments negotiate with us. So sometimes the stubbornness, or motivations of your adversary, cause you to not be able to make a deal. And as the claim mounts up, it becomes potentially a larger recovery. David did any investors say, paul, you have made a little profit. It is ok. Go on to Something Else . Did they ever say this during that long period of time . Paul interestingly, no. David they didnt . Ok. Paul even when it got some press, it was not an easy situation. It was not only the 14 years to or 15 Years Holding on to that thing, but it was contentious. David but you did not worry that somebody was maybe going to come physically attack you from argentina . You did not worry about that . Paul this is not the place to talk about the security arrangements, but it was a contentious situation. David if somebody had invested with you from the very beginning, and he or she kept the money with you from the beginning, i dont know if anybody did that, what kind of they haveturn with would compounded over 40 years . Paul my mom did that. David your mother is 99 . Paul yeah, 99 plus. She is waiting for that call next year. David i assume she is proud of you, i assume. Paul yes, she is. [laughter] david and paul the answer to your other question, from the beginning a 13. 5 net compounded rate of return, so one dollar became about 160, 165. And there were some earlier investors who have stayed in the all the entire time. David over 40 years, compounded 13. 5 net for 40 years, that is pretty good. Is it too late to invest retroactively into that . [laughter] david you have an image being a person that strikes fear into a lot of ceos. You must recognize people are afraid that they will get a call from paul singer. Paul it is good when a Corporate Executive listens with the understanding that we are real, we have the capacity to carry through on projects that we undertake, and that we need to be convinced. David today you take Corporate Bonds or government bonds and you are willing to litigate. Paul litigation is always a last resort in a situation in which there is a dispute about seniority or a claim. It is part of the equation. One of the risklimiting and valuecreation strategies is uncorrelation. Uncorrelation is a wonderful element to add to an absolute return seeking portfolio, because if you are doing something that has a pattern of risk and return, even if it is volatile, even if it is binary, make a lot, lose a lot, but a pattern of returns that does not have anything to do with the course of the stock or bond markets, or anything else in your portfolio, that is an elegant part of the mix. David do you ever do research on a company and then you call up or somebody calls up the ceo and says this is how you can improve your company, do this they say that is a good idea . I wish i had thought of that . Paul thats interesting. The way you are asking the question, it is, it presupposes that the response of the company is always either anger or hiding under their desks or some combination. David and that is wrong you would say . Paul no, sometimes you are actually knocking on an open door. My style and our style as a team is doing the work as thoroughly as we can to develop a thesis, to assess whether we think there really is an action or series of actions that can be taken to eliminate underperformance or ameliorate a situation, then contacting a company privately, testing with consultants or bankers, testing our ideas and trying to generate a dialogue. And sometimes you find you are knocking on an open door. Sometimes there is a founder or a Management Team that is ready to sell out or happy to go on to Something Else, but they are just they do not to feel like they are deserting their staff , their employees. So there are a lot of Different Reasons why a company that is ready for some kind of reformation or new blood likes to see a resolution that can maximize value. David how many investment professionals do you now have at your firm . Paul about 120. David how do decisions go forward . Paul i have a coceo and cocio, chief investment officer. His name is john pollock, and he has been with me since 1989. Riod of time, we have more than just complete each other sentences. The founding impulse of the hedge fund idea is independence of thinking. It is the opposite of investing by committee. And the earliest hedge fund folks of course were by themselves. They were sort of privateers in the worlds investment oceans. I never thought that the craft would be susceptible to an organizational approach, team approach. I actually never really thought i would be able to be a good manager and a good team leader. The way it actually works is a layered process by which we attempt to train people to accept responsibility to deliver trustworthy insights, inputs, to have done the work, to have commissioned the work, but john or i generally approve every meaningful position, and certainly every we have deep discussions about every large position. David you have an image though of being a person that strikes fear in a lot of ceos. You must recognize that some people are afraid they will get a call from paul singer. So does that image bother you . That you have an image of being a tough person and commanding . Paul what i have learned over the years is not to care too much about opprobrium and unfair press. It is good when a Corporate Executive listens with the understanding that we are real, that we have the capacity to carry through, and a history of carrying through on the projects that we undertake, and that we need to be convinced in order to say ok, sorry. Which sometimes we do. Sorry, we were wrong. Or, doing a great job. So it does not bother me anymore. David so how do you see the economy right now . Are you worried about the economy . Paul i am very concerned about where we are in terms of the system, the economy, the american economy, the global economy. After nine years of what i consider to be a distorted set of policies completely oriented towards what i regard as monetary extremism, combined with what i consider to be the growthsuppressive fiscal policies, regulatory, tax, so i think it has created a distorted recovery that has been partially responsible for this augmentation, exacerbation of inequality that has caused in combination of that, and the incomplete recovery has caused this middleclass stress and edginess around the world which has led to some political fringe parties and fringe thoughts, populism. And so after nine years of this artificial levitation on the part of financial assets, highend real estate, art, the things that rich people buy, what we have today is a Global Financial system that is just about as leveraged, and in many cases more leveraged, than before 2008. And so, and i dont think the Financial System is more sound. I do not think the fixes that have been put into place have actually created a sound Financial System. So i dont believe confidence is justified in policymakers and in central bankers, and the fact that confidence has not been lost up until now is obvious, but if and when confidence is lost, i think it could be lost in a very abrupt fashion, causing conceivably a ruckus in the bond market, stock markets, and in financial institutions. David you have given a lot of money, raised a lot of money for republicans. Do they listen to you . Paul their problem is they are subject to all kinds of forces, all kinds of pressures coming from 360 degrees on their compasses, and so the right policies and the best ideas are not necessarily the things that make the final cut. David now in the political world, you have become well known in the Republican Party outside of your firm. Last president ial election, who was your favorite candidate . [laughter] paul i supported i stood aside for most of 2015, and then supported marco rubio. David ok, and when he dropped out, did you have anybody next . [laughter] paul um, no. I stood aside. David ok. But ultimately when donald trump was the nominee for the party, did you support him as the nominee . Paul i voted for him. David ok. Paul and there is i was not going to vote for hillary clinton, as some of my republican friends did. And i became optimistic about some of the opportunities in Economic Growth and regulatory reform, tax reform. David has donald trump invited down to visit him . Did you know him before he was elected president . Paul i did not. I invested in his bonds a couple of times. David ok. [laughter] david those were highgrade bonds . [laughter] paul they were on the date of issue. [laughter] [applause] david they later became highyield. Paul and below. David right. [laughter] david so, have you seen him since he is president and have you given any advice . Paul i visited the white house once a few months ago and we chatted a bit about taxes and economic policy. David you have given a lot of money, raised a lot of money for republicans. Do they listen to you . Paul sometimes. David do they say thank you for your ideas . By the way, i am having a fundraiser in a week, or they do not do that . Paul that is not the way it goes. Lets beblem, i mean, humanists here, their problem is they are subject to all kinds of forces, all kinds of pressures coming from 360 degrees on their compasses, and so the right policies and the best ideas are not necessarily and many of them listen and many of them are smart, but not necessarily things that make the final cut. But i think it is important for citizens to, informed citizens, to try to give assistance. We are among republican activists who actually can, in a relatively unconflicted level, we are not we have less parochial interests in the talk tothat we talked policymakers about than most folks. David you have made a fair amount of money and have been very involved in philanthropy. One of the areas you have been involved with is human rights. What propelled you to get involved in human rights and Marriage Equality issues . Paul first of all, i apply to philanthropy the same spirit of activism, trying to get involved, trying to make a difference, make an impact, create things, not just write out a check. It is a similar impulse as the impulses that govern my investing style. In the case of gay rights, my younger son came out to me as gay in 1998 when he was 21 years old. And shortly after some brief discussions, i became very interested in being a funder of gay rights groups, of helping out in that realm. At the beginning, just writing out checks. At the beginning, pursuant to a agreement with my son, anonymously. But over a period of time it became overt, and over a period of time, i and my team became quite friendly with legacy gay rights groups, including democrats, hardcore democrats, and we started working together on different projects. The culmination of that was and it was really a very, very highly strategic and wellexecuted project, was a partnership with the governor of new york with us and our democratic friends to make gay marriage legal in new york, which required republican state senators help, and we were involved in that. David when youre not investing your money and your investors giving away money, you must have some time for relaxation, so what gives you pleasure outside of those other activities . Paul i am a musician. I play piano and keyboards. David you play at concerts, or you do it at home, or do you have a band . Paul i have been in a number of bands, amateur bands of course. And i play with musicians now. David is this because you took lessons when you were young and you do not get to the level you wanted and now take pleasure in it . Or did you learn it later in life . Piano i started taking p lessons when i was 10 years old and took a blues lessons when i was 11 years old. I have been in reggae bands, blues bands, rock bands. Ive had a lot of fun because most of my family are musicians, and so we have a family band also. David oh. Paul and so we have a guitar player, a saxophone player, drummer. David what would you like to see as the headline of what you have accomplished in your life . Paul he tried to make a difference. He protected a lot of peoples capital over a long period of time. He was steady, reliable. David pretty good. So a lot of people who are wealthy, i have noticed, are not really happy. You seem like a happy person. [laughter] david would you say you are happy with what you have accomplished . You are not tortured . Paul this is a form of therapy, david, which i appreciate. Do you mind if i lie down . [laughter] david no. You have done an incredible job building a business that i admire what you have built, and what you have done with philanthropy. It is quite remarkable. So i want to thank you for a great conversation. And i thank everybody for listening. Paul thank you. Emily it has been nearly six years since tim cook took over from apples iconic cofounder steve jobs. Each year, the Company Becomes more of cooks own. He has unveiled apple watch and apple music. He pulled off the largest acquisition in apple history, buying beats. He has taken on issues like the environment, philanthropy, equality, and education. He stood up to president obama on user privacy and maintains a dialogue with President Trump despe