Hedge Fund Poll: The world’s best hedge fund managers
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Unassuming and softly spoken, John Paulson makes an unlikely hedge fund manager. However, he is one of the most successful, and regarded by many as the king of merger arbitrage. He started his fund, Paulson & Company, in 1994 after a career with Bear Stearns in M&A and then as a partner at Gruss & Partners, a merger arbitrage specialist. In December, when Euromoney interviewed him, his fund management firm had $6 billion in assets. Given the enormous success Paulson has had in profiting from the sub-prime fallout, that figure is now above $7 billion. Paulson filled headlines in March and April as investors gushed over his returns. By the end of March, he had produced 100% net returns year-to-date, and 60% in February alone on the back of sub-prime bets. Investors familiar with the fund say that Paulson had been heavily shorting the ABX sub-prime index since November.