Hedge fund boss in £1.5bn subprime coup

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Paulson, a former Bear Stearns investment banker, who runs his own New York hedge fund Paulson & Co, is estimated to have paid himself $3 billion (£1.52 billion) last year after making huge amounts in the meltdown which has seen much of Wall Street and major European banks like UBS write-off billions of dollars of losses.

Paulson is reckoned to have made the $3 billion after his firm aggressively short-sold collateralised debt obligations, the toxic packages of mortgage-backed securities which went badly wrong when Americans started defaulting heavily on their home loans.

The huge profits made by Paulson appear to mirror the actions of the legendary Hungarian financier George Soros, who is said to have made billions destabilising the pound during Britain's foreign exchange crisis in 1992.

Soros is said to have heard of the success of Paulson's firm betting against the US housing market and invited him to lunch.

The estimates of the pay of Paulson, 52, who set up his hedge fund in 1994, come from Trader Monthly magazine, which reckons that four other American hedge fund titans paid themselves more than $1 billion (£505 million) last year, headed by Phil Falcone of the activist fund Harbinger Capital Partners. Falcone may have been paid as much as $2 billion (£1.01 billion).

Of the London-based hedge fund managers, Chris Hohn of TCI and GLG's founders Noam Gottesman and Pierre Lagrange, are named as the biggest uber-earners.

Trader Monthly estimates Hohn paid himself up to $900 million (£454 million) last year while Gottesman and Lagrange's pay may have topped $800 million (£405 million).

Another London-based hedge fund manager Alan Howard, of Brevan Howard, is also estimated to have paid himself $800 million.

The payday for Gottesman and Lagrange is the biggest yet for the GLG bosses.