John Paulson

John Alfred Paulson (born December 14, 1955) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist renowned for founding Paulson & Co. in 1994 and orchestrating one of the most lucrative trades in financial history by shorting subprime mortgage securities ahead of the 2008 housing collapse.

A summa cum laude graduate in finance from New York University Stern School of Business in 1978 and a Baker Scholar MBA recipient from Harvard Business School, Paulson built his early career in mergers and acquisitions at Bear Stearns and as a partner at Gruss Partners before launching his firm with a focus on merger arbitrage and credit strategies. His 2007 bet against overvalued mortgage-backed assets generated roughly $15 billion in profits for Paulson & Co. and $3.7 billion personally, capitalizing on empirical indicators of a housing bubble fueled by lax lending and securitization excesses that mainstream institutions largely overlooked.

John Paulson was born John Alfred Paulson on December 14, 1955, in Queens, New York City, the son of Alfred G. Paulson and Jacqueline Boklan Paulson. His father, originally named Alfredo Guillermo Paulsen and of Ecuadorian descent, had immigrated and pursued various business activities, reflecting a background of self-reliance amid post-World War II economic challenges. His mother, from a family of Jewish immigrants, provided a cultural foundation rooted in Jewish traditions.

Raised as the third of four children in a modest Queens household, Paulson attended the Whitestone Hebrew Centre, where community values emphasized achievement and resilience. This environment, marked by immigrant-derived frugality rather than inherited wealth, fostered an early skepticism toward speculative windfalls and a preference for tangible value, contrasting sharply with the leveraged optimism of later financial narratives. From a young age, he exhibited entrepreneurial initiative, later recounting ventures that honed his independent problem-solving amid limited resources.