Carson Block

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American businessman

title: "Carson Block" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1977-births", "living-people", "american-finance-and-investment-writers", "american-financial-analysts", "american-hedge-fund-managers", "american-whistleblowers", "businesspeople-from-shanghai", "jones-day-people", "people-from-summit,-new-jersey", "university-of-southern-california-alumni", "chicago-kent-college-of-law-alumni", "21st-century-american-businesspeople"] description: "American businessman" topic_path: "economics" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carson_Block" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American businessman ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox person"]

Field	Value
name	Carson Block
birth_date
birth_place	New York City, New York, U.S.
alma_mater	University of Southern California
Chicago-Kent College of Law
occupation	Investor
known_for	founder of Muddy Waters Research
title	Founder, CEO, & CIO of Muddy Waters Capital LLC
website
::

Carson Cutler Block (born April 27, 1977) is an American investor and activist short-seller, best known as the founder of Muddy Waters Research and Muddy Waters Capital, an investment research firm and hedge fund. His work has included high-profile campaigns on publicly traded companies in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Block first gained wide attention in 2011 for reporting on irregularities at Sino‑Forest, a Toronto‑listed Chinese forestry company that later entered Canadian bankruptcy protection. He was named to Bloomberg Markets' "50 Most Influential" list in 2011. He has also appeared in the 2017 documentary The China Hustle and co‑authored Doing Business in China For Dummies (2007).

Early life and education

Block was born in New York City and grew up in Summit, New Jersey. His parents divorced when he was six years old. Block has been an atheist since he was in second grade.

He earned an undergraduate B.S in Business Administration from the University of Southern California ('98). There, Block studied Chinese and Business (focusing on Finance). He moved to China after college, in 1998.

Block later returned to the United States, and worked in investment banking for nine months in 1999 for the Los Angeles office of CIBC World Markets. He then went to work with his father during 1999 to 2002, 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.

He then attended Chicago-Kent College of Law, from which he holds a J.D. degree ('05).

Career

After graduating from law school, Block moved back to Shanghai, China, and worked in mergers and acquisitions and foreign direct investment for law firm Jones Day from 2005 until 2006.

He founded Muddy Waters Research, an investor research firm and hedge fund, and became known for alleging and documenting fraudulent accounting practices in publicly traded Chinese companies that were trading in North America, and as a short-seller.

He targeted Chinese forest plantation operator company Sino-Forest in 2011, accusing it of overstating its timber holdings.

In 2011, Block was ranked as a 50 Most Influential Thinker by Bloomberg Markets.

Block was featured in the 2015 book by Richard Teitelbaum entitled The Most Dangerous Trade: How Short Sellers Uncover Fraud, Keep Markets Honest, and Make and Lose Billions. In September 2017, he initiated a private lawsuit against Equifax, accusing it of neglecting to safeguard his personally identifiable information. He appears in the 2017 financial documentary The China Hustle, outlining his research into securities fraud of Chinese companies through Muddy Waters. In early 2018, he settled a case with St. Jude Medical Inc.

As of April 2021, eight of the companies that Block had exposed as being fraudulent had been delisted from stock exchanges, and two other such companies had settled charges with their regulators. Over the prior five years, Muddy Waters had annualized returns of 19% (after a management fee (2.5%) and a performance fee (30%)).

In 2022, Block wrote a white paper entitled "Distorting the Shorts," in which he said that Columbia associate professor Joshua Mitts, who had authored research about short sellers which argued that some short activism was market manipulation, had written research that was “greatly flawed, possibly to the point of being fraudulent”. He called the work by Mitts "a non-empirical, conflict-laden polemic based on misrepresentation, selective presentation of data, and lack of academic integrity.

In 2024, U.S. authorities closed both civil and criminal probes into Block’s activities without action.

References

"Carson Cutler Block". Wall Street Journal Markets.
(7 July 2011). "Carson Block: The man behind Muddy Waters, a scourge of listed Chinese companies". The Economist.
(August 21, 2019). "Carson Block: the world’s most feared short-seller". Money Week.
(December 17, 2012). "Carson Block: a Short-Selling Superstar". Business Insider.
(December 13, 2021). "Stay on Guard When Investing in China, Expert Says. ‘Expect to Be Blindsided Again.’". Barron's.
(June 27, 2022). "The Value Perspective Podcast – with Carson Block". Schroders.
(July 15, 2011). "Carson Block: The man who felled a forestry giant". The Globe and Mail.
Kawa, Lucas. (17 December 2012). "How Short-Seller Carson Block Became The Most Hated Man In China". Business Insider.
(February 12, 2022). "Are Activist Short Sellers Misunderstood?". The New York Times.
Weil, Jonathan. (10 January 2013). "Big China Short Shows Downside of Kleptocracy". Bloomberg View.
(July 18, 2011). "Muddy Waters’ Carson Block: ‘I’m Proud of the Impact We’ve Had’". CNBC.
(February 18, 2016). "explains how he picks his targets". Yahoo.
"Bloomberg Markets Most Influential 50". Bloomberg L.P.
(May 28, 2021). "Carson Block on the Short-Selling Market". Bloomberg.
(2017-09-17). "My $500,000 lawsuit over the Equifax cyberbreach is personal, says short-seller Carson Block".
"Yes, China Does Cheat In Trade - The Rest Of The World Needs To Wake Up". Forbes.
"UNIFORM APPLICATION FOR INVESTMENT ADVISER REGISTRATION AND REPORT BY EXEMPT REPORTING ADVISERS".
(April 19, 2021). "The Rage of Carson Block". Institutional Investor.
(July 12, 2022). "The DOJ’s Short-Seller Probe Was the Star of a Debate Between Carson Block and a Former SEC Commissioner". Institutional Investor.
(March 19, 2022). "Carson Block’s Latest Short Target Is a Columbia Law Professor". The Wall Street Journal.
Herbst-Bayliss, Svea. (August 12, 2024). "US government ends probes into Muddy Waters' Carson Block, sources say". Reuters.

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