Founded in 1994 with $2 million and one employee, John Alfred Paulson is a hedge fund manager who heads Paulson & Co., a New York-based investment management firm. Born in 1955 in Queens, New York, he has been called “one of the most prominent names in high finance” and” a man who made one of the biggest fortunes in Wall Street history.”
The Paulson Advantage fund rose 6.6 percent last month and 8.4 percent this year. Bloomberg News has reported that the fund had $327 million in assets as of February 1. His prominence and fortune were made in 2007 when he earned “almost $4 billion” personally and was transformed “from an obscure money manager into a financial legend” by using credit default swaps to effectively bet against the U.S. subprime mortgage lending market. As of September 2013, Forbes estimates his net worth at $11.4 billion.
It has been reported that Paulson & Co.’s event-driven Advantage Plus fund jumped 9.8 percent during the month and is up 13 percent this year, according to Bloomberg News, Gold Fund rose 18 percent in the month and is up 40 percent for the year and the Paulson Partners Enhanced fund increased 7.4 percent in February to extend gains to 8.8 percent in 2014. A spokesman for Paulson & Co. with WalekPeppercomm, Armel Leslie, declined to comment on the reports on the returns.
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