Paulson pledges personal fortune to backstop his firm

Billionaire John Paul⛦son is doubling down on his own hedge funds.

The founder of Paulson & Co., who has struggled with rocky ret💃urns and client defections, has plꦺedged his personal fortune to secure a credit line for his firm, .

The moneyman made a killing betting against the housing market in 2🧜007, when the meltdown in subprime mortgages delivered him a personal payday of $3.7 billion — among the biggest in history.

Call it karma or comeuppance. But the hedgie has had rough go s෴ince the economy regained its footing, with wrong-way bets on energy, gold and Europe’s economy, among others. The worst performer was his Advantage Plus fund, which plummeted 36 percent in 2014.

Falling assets and fees are eroding the collateral Paulson & Co. pledged🧸 for its original credit line, which the firm uses for expenses and to p🤪ay employees.

As a result, the hedgie🤡 is putting up his stakes in his own hedge funds as addi🍌tional collateral for a credit line for Paulson & Co. with HSBC for five years, Bloomberg reported, citing a filing last month with the state of New York.

The firm’s assets under management are down about 50 percent, to $18 billion, since it received the original credit line. More than half of that money belongs to Paulson and other insiders at the New York-based firm who don’t pay fees, according to the report.

While other big-name financiers, including George Soros and Steve Schwarzman, have borrowed against✅ stakes in their own funds, their holdings weren’t used as ♛collateral to back their firms, Bloomberg noted.