John Paulson Net worth 11.2 billion -
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John Alfred Paulson (born December 14, 1955) is an American hedge fund manager. He is the founder and President of Paulson & Co., a New York-based hedge fund.
Paulson became a billionaire by short-selling subprime mortgages in 2007 and made $3.7 billion that year. In 2010, he beat a hedge-fund record by making nearly $5 billion. His fortune was made largely from the collapse of mortgage backed securities market.
In 2011, he made bad trades in Bank of America, Citigroup and the fraud-suspected China-based Canadian-listed company, Sino-Forest Corporation. His flagship fund, Paulson Advantage Fund, was down over 40% as of September 2011. During that same time, Paulson had invested most of his personal fortune in gold, and it had grown by $3.1 billion from September 2010 to September 2011.
Hedge fund titan John Paulson, who pulled off the greatest trade ever six years ago betting against subprime mortgage securities, is now having to sooth jittery investors after his Paulson Advantage ended 2012 down more than 14%, its second straight year in the red. In December, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney recommended that its advisors pull client money from the fund. However, Paulson's Enhanced fund returned nearly 20% net of fees last year, while the firm's Credit Opportunities fund netted 8.4%. Assets under management at Paulson & Co. stand at $18 billion, down from $36 billion in early 2011. An NYU alum and trustee, he donated $20 million to the school in 2009; he gave $5 million to Southampton Hospital, near his summer home, and is donating $15 million to a new maternity hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where his father was born. Paulson made headlines in October 2012 when he pledged $100 million to the Central Park Conservancy.
