Carson Block is an American investor and the founder of

Muddy Waters Research 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. The firm has exposed accounti ...

. Block is known for documenting and alleging fraudulent accounting practices in

publicly traded A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (list ...

Chinese companies.

Early life and career

Block grew up in

Summit, New Jersey Summit is a city in Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The city is located on a ridge in northern- central New Jersey, within the Raritan Valley and Rahway Valley regions in the New York metropolitan area. At the 2010 United Sta ...

. He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California and holds a J.D. degree from Chicago-Kent College of Law. 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 the self-storage business in 2007. In 2011, Block was ranked as a 50 Most Influential Thinker by Bloomberg Markets. In September 2017, Block initiated a private lawsuit against

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 (together known as the "Big Thr ...

, accusing the latter of neglecting to safeguard his

personally identifiable information Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates ha ...

. He appears in the documentary

The China Hustle ''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. M ...

, outlining his research into Securities fraud of Chinese companies through Muddy Waters. In early 2018, he was also forced to settle a case with St. Jude Medical Inc. in order to avoid a lawsuit. Muddy Waters Investment Funds are domiciliated in the Cayman Island and Delaware. The Board of the Cayman domiciled fund includes a Director - Andrew Hersant - appearing in the "Paradise papers".

References

1977 births Living people University of Southern California alumni Chicago-Kent College of Law alumni American businesspeople 21st-century American businesspeople {{US-business-bio-1970s-stub