Phillip "Phil" Goldstein is an American investor, former civil engineer, and manager of the

hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as sho ...

Bulldog Investors, known for its value-driven investment strategy, its activist investment campaigns and its focus on closed-end mutual funds.

Early life and education

Goldstein was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York in 1945. He decided as a child that he wanted to become an engineer, when his patriotism was inspired by the launch of the

Sputnik Sputnik 1 (; see § Etymology) was the first artificial Earth satellite. It was launched into an elliptical low Earth orbit by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957 as part of the Soviet space program. It sent a radio signal back to Earth for t ...

. He attended the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

, earning a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in 1966. He then returned to the

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to pursue a master's degree in engineering from the

City College of New York The City College of the City University of New York (also known as the City College of New York, or simply City College or CCNY) is a public university within the City University of New York (CUNY) system in New York City. Founded in 1847, Cit ...

, which he completed in 1968.

Career

Goldstein spent the first 25 years of his career as a civil engineer for the

City of New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

, working on projects such as the maintenance and improvement of the

Brooklyn Bridge The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/ suspension bridge in New York City, spanning the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first fixed crossing of the East River ...

's roadway. In the 1970s he also used his proficiency with

math Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

in the game of

blackjack Blackjack (formerly Black Jack and Vingt-Un) is a casino banking game. The most widely played casino banking game in the world, it uses decks of 52 cards and descends from a global family of casino banking games known as Twenty-One. This fami ...

, and even considered a career as a

professional gambler Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to legal methods used to gain an advantage while gambling, in contrast to cheating in casinos, cheating. The term usually refers to Casino game, house-banked casino games, but can also refer to games ...

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. Over time, this approach led Goldstein to employ the principal of

value investing Value investing is an investment paradigm that involves buying securities that appear underpriced by some form of fundamental analysis. The various forms of value investing derive from the investment philosophy first taught by Benjamin Graham ...

with a particular emphasis on

closed-end fund A closed-end fund (CEF) is a fund that raises capital by issuing a fixed number of shares which are not redeemable, and then invest that capital in financial assets such as stocks and bonds. Unlike open-end funds, new shares in a closed-end fund ...

s, in his personal investing. In 1989, he met former

Dean Witter Dean Witter Reynolds was an American stock brokerage and securities firm catering to a variety of clients. Prior to the company's acquisition, it was among the largest firms in the securities industry with over 9,000 account executives (ranking t ...

associate Steven Samuels at a

conference A conference is a meeting of two or more experts to discuss and exchange opinions or new information about a particular topic. Conferences can be used as a form of group decision-making, although discussion, not always decisions, are the main p ...

on closed-end funds. Samuels introduced Goldstein to some potential investment clients, and in 1992 the two started Bulldog Investors with $700,000. Andrew Dakos and Rajeev Das later joined as partners. By 1996, Goldstein and his partners decided to take a more activist approach to some of the fund's investing, with a particular emphasis on liquidity events such as asset sales. In 2009, Goldstein and Bulldog Investors ran a

proxy contest A proxy fight, proxy contest or proxy battle (sometimes even called a proxy war) is an unfriendly contest for the control over an organization. The event usually occurs when a corporation's stockholders develop opposition to some aspect of the corp ...

to elect a new board of directors to Insured Municipal Income Fund, 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. 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 Market value or OMV (Open Market Valuation) is the price at which an asset would trade in a competitive auction setting. Market value is often used interchangeably with ''open market value'', ''fair value'' or ''fair market value'', although the ...

and its

net asset value Net asset value (NAV) is the value of an entity's assets minus the value of its liabilities, often in relation to open-end, mutual funds, hedge funds, and venture capital funds. Shares of such funds registered with the U.S. Securities and Exch ...

(NAV), or

liquidation value Liquidation value is the likely price of an asset when it is allowed insufficient time to sell on the open market, thereby reducing its exposure to potential buyers. Liquidation value is typically lower than fair market value. Unlike cash or securit ...

. Oftentimes the strategy then includes converting the fund to an open-ended one, or simply liquidating the funds' assets and returning them to

shareholders A shareholder (in the United States often referred to as stockholder) of a corporation is an individual or legal entity (such as another corporation, a body politic, a trust or partnership) that is registered by the corporation as the legal owner ...

Board seats

Goldstein is a member of the board of directors of Imperial Holdings (), the Mexico Equity and Income Fund (), ASA Ltd. (), the Special Opportunities Fund () and MVC Capital ().

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldstein, Phillip 1945 births Living people American hedge fund managers USC Viterbi School of Engineering alumni City College of New York alumni