another good trader

John Alfred Paulson is president of Paulson & Co., Inc., a New York-based hedge fund. In 1994, he founded his own hedge fund with $2 million and two employees (himself and an assistant).

Paulson & Co., Inc. had assets under management (as of June 1, 2007) of $12.5 billion (95% from institutions), which leapt to $36 billion as of November 2008 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.

John Paulson is not related to former Goldman Sachs CEO and U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. A September 26, 2008 Wall Street Journal opinion written by John Paulson suggested an alternative to the Treasury Secretary's plan for stabilizing the markets.

In September 2008, Paulson has bet against four of the five biggest British bank. His positions included a £350m bet against shares in Barclays; £292m against Royal Bank of Scotland; and £260m against Lloyds TSB. He eventually booked a profit of as much as £280m after reducing its short position in RBS in January 2009. Paulson & Co., the hedge fund run by billionaire John Paulson, may have lost out on about 218 million pounds in profit after failing to close a short position in Barclays. On August 12, 2009, Paulson purchased 2 million shares of Goldman Sachs as well as 35 million shares in Regions Financial.

In this year's Forbes ranking of global billionaires, Paulson is number 76 with an estimated $6 billion. He had a net worth of $300 million at the beginning of 2007.

hedge-fund manager John Paulson has been quietly buying shares of troubled banking giant Citigroup Inc. (C 5.25, +0.20, +3.95%) in recent weeks, the New York Post reported Thursday. Paulson has acquired about a 2% stake in Citi.