Free 7-day Trial
All Articles and Columns »

John Paulson: The "Risk" in Risk Arbitrage

Mar 25, 2011
guruek
guruek
Before John Paulson became the John Paulson we know today, he was a successful but not glamorous hedge fund manager looking for profit among the merger and acquisition deals.

Jay of Marketfolly dug out a chapter of a book that was written by Paulson himself, called “ The ‘Risk’ in Risk Arbitrage”. The chapter appeared in the book Managing Hedge Fund Risk, compiled by Virginia Reynolds Parker.

Some notes taken by Jay:
When looking at arbitrage opportunities, he lays out screening criteria in which he says to avoid the following: agreements in principle, deals subject to financing, targets with poor earnings, and deals in cyclical or highly regulated industries.

On the other side, he prefers to focus on: definitive agreements, large acquirers, deals with no financing conditions, reasonable valuations, and limited regulatory risk.

He concludes that, "Unfortunately, every deal has risk, so one cannot avoid risk entirely. Instead, one must prudently manage risk to produce a desired return with minimal drawdowns and low market correlation."


Read the full chapter:


John-Paulson-Risk-in-Risk-Arbitrage -

Read Jay’s orginal article.


Download guru portfolio report (PDF format):

Download Guru portfolio report
John Paulson
(Updated on 05/15/2012)

Track Gurus’ Stock Purchases Daily – Real Time Guru Picks

GuruFocus "Real Time Picks" reports the stock purchases and sales that Gurus have made within the prior 2 weeks. The report time lag can be as short as 3 days after the date of the transaction. This is just one of the features provided with GuruFocus Premium Membership.

Click Here to Try It Free!


Rate this article:

Rating: 4.1/5 (8 votes)

Comments

LwC
LwC - Mar 25, 2011 at 5:17 PM
Thanks for that. I found it to be very interesting.

Sivaram
Sivaram - Mar 27, 2011 at 7:54 PM

Thanks

Please leave your comment:



More Gurufocus Links

GuruFocus Affiliate Program: Earn up to $104 per referral. ( Learn More)
Free 7-day Trial