John Paulson Hedge Fund

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paulson

John Alfred Paulson (born December 14, 1955) is the founder and president of Paulson & Co., a New York-based hedge fund.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Hedge fund
2.1 SEC v. Goldman Sachs
3 Other
4 References
5 External links
[edit] Early life

Paulson was born in Queens, New York, the son of Jacqueline and Alfredo Paulson, a Chief Financial Officer for Ruder Finn.[4][5] Paulson attended the Whitestone Hebrew Centre (a United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism school) in Whitestone.
He earned his bachelor's degree in finance from New York University's College of Business and Public Administration (now called NYU Leonard N. Stern School of Business), where he graduated first in his class. He earned his MBA from Harvard Business School. He began his career at Boston Consulting Group before leaving to join Odyssey Partners, working under Leon Levy. He later worked in the mergers and acquisitions group at Bear Stearns. Prior to founding his own firm, he was a partner at mergers arbitrage firm Gruss Partners LP. In 1994, he founded his own hedge fund with $2 million and two employees (himself and an assistant).[citation needed]
[edit]Hedge fund

Paulson & Co., Inc., is the manager of several hedge funds. His firm had assets under management (as of June 1, 2007) of $12.5 billion (95% from institutions), which had jumped to $36 billion by November 2008.[6] In 2007 alone his firm earned $15 billion.[7]
Under his direction, Paulson & Co has capitalized on the problems in the foreclosure and mortgage backed securities (MBS) markets. In 2008 he decided to start a new fund that would capitalize on Wall Street's capital problems by lending money to investment banks and other hedge funds currently feeling the pressure of the more than $345 billion of write downs resulting from under-performing assets linked to the housing market. On May 15, 2008, Paulson & Co., which bought 50 million shares of Yahoo stock during the first quarter of 2008, said it is supporting Carl Icahn on a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board.[8] In early 2008, the firm hired former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
In September 2008, Paulson bet against four of the five biggest British banks.[9] His positions included a £350m bet against shares in Barclays; £292m against Royal Bank of Scotland; and £260m against Lloyds TSB.[10] His firm eventually booked a profit of as much as £280m after reducing its short position in RBS in January 2009.[11]
On August 12, 2009, Paulson purchased 2 million shares of Goldman Sachs as well as 35 million shares in Regions Financial.[12] Paulson has also purchased shares in Bank of America expecting the stock to double by 2011.[13] In November 2009 Paulson announced he was starting a gold fund focused on gold mining stocks and gold-related investments.[14]
In December 2009, the New York Times reported that Paulson had profited during the financial crisis of 2007 by betting against synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).[15] To help protect these bets, Paulson and others successfully prevented attempts to limit foreclosures and rework mortgage loans.[16][17]
On February 22, 2010, Paulson's fund was linked to the restructuring and recapitalization of the publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.[18] Highlights of the agreement include, a reduction in the senior debt to $3 billion from the current $5 billion, with new equity issued to the senior debt holders (including Paulson & Co., Guggenheim Partners, and others),[19] conversion of the $2 billion mezzanine debt into equity and warrant, receipt of $650m of new cash from the sale of new equity. According to The Irish Times,[20] the investments by the current equity holders of EMPG, including HMH's CEO Barry O'Callaghan, private clients of Davy Stockbrokers, Reed Elsevier, and others, will see their investment of over $3.5 billion written down to zero.[citation needed]
After the 2007-9 stock market crash, Paulson's fund generated $1 billion betting on the recovery of Citigroup.[21]
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