Paulson pulls emergency break - he quits Sino-Forest

Verspekuliert: Hedge-Fond Star Paulson zieht Notbremse

Sino-Forest Corp., the Hong Kong- based tree-plantation owner that’s plunged 89 percent since being targeted by short seller Carson Block, lost the support of its biggest shareholder after Paulson & Co. sold all its stock.

businessweek---June 21 (Bloomberg) -- Sino-Forest Corp., the Hong Kong- based tree-plantation owner that’s plunged 89 percent since being targeted by short seller Carson Block, lost the support of its biggest shareholder after Paulson & Co. sold all its stock.

John Paulson’s New York-based hedge fund, which made $15 billion in 2007 betting against U.S. mortgages, said in a regulatory filing yesterday that it sold all 34.7 million of its shares. Sino-Forest has dropped to as low as C$1.99 from C$18.21 in Toronto trading after Block, a runs Muddy Waters LLC, said June 2 that the company overstated its production


From Wikipedia:
Paulson & Co., Inc., is the manager of several hedge funds. His firm had assets under management (as of June 1, 2007) of $12.5 billion (95% from institutions), which had jumped to $36 billion by November 2008.[5] In 2007 alone his firm earned $15 billion.[6]

On May 15, 2008, Paulson & Co., which bought 50 million shares of Yahoo stock during the first quarter of 2008, said it is supporting Carl Icahn on a proxy fight to replace Yahoo's board.[7] In early 2008, the firm hired former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

Under his direction, Paulson & Co has capitalized on the problems in the foreclosure and mortgage backed securities (MBS) markets. In September 2008, Paulson bet against four of the five biggest British banks.[8] His positions included a £350m bet against shares in Barclays; £292m against Royal Bank of Scotland; and £260m against Lloyds TSB.[9] His firm eventually booked a profit of as much as £280m after reducing its short position in RBS in January 2009.[10] In December 2009, the New York Times reported that Paulson had profited during the financial crisis of 2007 by betting against synthetic collateralized debt obligations (CDOs).[11] To help protect these bets, Paulson and others successfully prevented attempts to limit foreclosures and rework mortgage loans.[12][13]

In late 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. On August 12, 2009, Paulson purchased 2 million shares of Goldman Sachs as well as 35 million shares in Regions Financial.[14] Paulson has also purchased shares in Bank of America expecting the stock to double by 2011.[15] After the 2007-9 stock market crash, Paulson's fund generated $1 billion betting on the recovery of Citigroup.[16]

In November 2009 Paulson announced he was starting a gold fund focused on gold mining stocks and gold-related investments.[17]