Elliott Associates was founded by Paul Singer in 1977, making it one as the oldest hedge funds under continuous management. It, together with Elliott International, form the Elliott Management Corporation, which manages roughly $15 billion of capital for large institutional investors and wealthy individuals alike. Elliott International Limited was launched in 1994 and managed to beat the S&P 500 index by around 5 percentage points per year on the average since its inception. Elliott Associates also has a similar track record. Before founding his fund, Paul Singer earned a BS in psychology from the University of Rochester and a JD from Harvard Law School. After that, Paul Singer spent the next four years working in corporate laws firms and the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette before founding Elliott Associates.

Elliott Associates takes an activist approach to investment, meaning that the fund will take on significant, but minority, stakes in companies that are distress or not performed as well as their peers, and attempt to affect change within the company's management to deliver the greater shareholder value possible. It looks specifically to corporate, real estate, and sovereign debt, while concentrating its investments in North America, Asia, and Europe, frequently buying debt, then selling it at a profit. "Stability is not the way of the world," says Paul Singer. He finds significant opportunity in "structured products, readily available at cheap prices from banks that are still under pressure; securities related to distressed real estate in the U.S., Europe and Japan; and discounted claims inÉ bankruptcy."