John Alfred Paulson (born December 14, 1955) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager. He leads Paulson & Co., a New York-based investment management firm he founded in 1994. He has been called "one of the most prominent names in high finance", "a man who made one of the biggest fortunes in Wall Street history," and a "hedge fund swindler". His prominence and fortune were made in 2007 when he earned almost $4 billion 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. In 2010, Paulson earned $4.9 billion. The Forbes real-time tracker estimated his net worth at $3 billion as of January 2023. Early life and education Paulson was born on December 14, 1955, in Queens, New York, the third of four children of Alfred G. Paulson (1924–2002) and Jacqueline (née Boklan, 1926–2018). His father was born Alfredo Guillermo Paulsen in Ecuador to a father of half French and half Norwegian descent and an Ecuadorian mother. Alfredo was orphaned at fifteen and at age sixteen moved to Los Angeles with his younger brother Alberto. Alfredo enlisted in the US Army where he served and was wounded in Italy during World War II. He later changed his surname from Paulsen to Paulson. John's mother was the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania and Romania who had moved to New York City. Jacqueline met Alfredo while they both attended UCLA. They wed and moved to New York City, where Alfredo worked at Arthur Andersen and later as the CFO at public relations firm Ruder Finn. Realizing that his previously chosen career path in sales would not provide a steady and secure cash flow, Paulson returned to NYU in 1976 where he began to excel in business studies. In 1978, he graduated valedictorian of his class summa cum laude in finance from New York University's College of Business and Public Administration. He went on to Harvard Business School, on a Sidney J. Weinberg/Goldman Sachs scholarship, earning an MBA as a George F. Baker Scholar (top 5 percent of his class) in 1980. Career Paulson began his career at Boston Consulting Group in 1980 where he did research, providing advice to companies. Ambitious to work in investment on Wall Street, he left to join Odyssey Partners where he worked with Leon Levy. He moved on