Phil Murphy

Phil Murphy

Philip Dunton Murphy is an American financier, diplomat and politician. He has served as the 56th governor of New Jersey since January 2018. Murphy had a 23-year career at Goldman Sachs, where he accumulated considerable wealth before retiring in 2006. He served as finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee in the mid-late 2000s under Howard Dean.

About Phil Murphy in brief

Summary Phil MurphyPhilip Dunton Murphy is an American financier, diplomat and politician. He has served as the 56th governor of New Jersey since January 2018. Murphy had a 23-year career at Goldman Sachs, where he held several high-level positions and accumulated considerable wealth before retiring in 2006. He served as finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee in the mid-late 2000s under Howard Dean. In December 2019, Murphy became the chairperson of the Democratic Governors Association, a position he held for a year. In 2016 Murphy released five years’ worth of federal tax returns. In 2014 he earned about USD 6 million, paid about USD 2 million in taxes for an effective tax rate of 34%, and directly or indirectly donated 24% of his income to charity. By one estimate, reported in Der Spiegel in 2009, his wealth after leaving the firm was in the range of several hundred million dollars. Murphy moved to Middletown Township, New Jersey, in the late 1990s. He and his family live in a riverside estate with a USD 200,000 annual property tax bill. He also owns homes in Berlin and Italy. Murphy was born in Needham, Massachusetts, and was raised in both Needham and nearby Newton. He graduated from Harvard University in 1979 with an AB degree in economics. At Harvard he aspired to become a professional musical theater performer and was elected president of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, a theatrical student society. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School,where he received a MBA in 1983.

In 1999 Murphy took the post of President of the International Council of Goldman Sachs. In that capacity, he officed in Hong Kong in 1999 when the firm profited from its investment in Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings, a shoe manufacturer that became notorious for its harsh labor practices. He was also active in co-founding the Atlantik-Brantkücke organization, including as its International Advisor, including in its International Council, including its International Advisory Council. In 2009 he was the United States Ambassador to Germany from 2009 to 2013, during which time he dealt with the international fallout from the U.S. diplomatic cables leak. His business responsibilities were later expanded to encompass Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, as well as in the emerging post-Warsaw Pact economies of Central Europe. In this role he engaged in a number of transactions with the German government’s Treuhandaner-extantik agency, whose purpose was to conduct the privatization of formerly state-owned enterprises within the boundaries of no-longer-long East Germany. He is the son of Dorothy Louise and Walter F. Murphy. According to Murphy, his family was middle class on a good day. His mother, a secretary, and father, a high-school dropout who took any job he could, lived paycheck to paycheck. Both of his parents were enthusiastic supporters of John F. Kennedy and volunteered for his campaign in the 1952 United States Senate election in Massachusetts.