Henry Paulson

Henry Paulson received his MBA from Harvard Business School and joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, working his way up to become CEO in 1999. Under his leadership Goldman expanded its investment banking and securities businesses significantly. In 2006 he was appointed US Treasury Secretary by President George W. Bush. His tenure coincided with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. In September 2008, in a matter of weeks, Paulson presided over the nationalisation of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (combined liabilities of $5 trillion), the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers (the largest bankruptcy in US history), the sale of Merrill Lynch to Bank of America, the Fed rescue of AIG (which had $2.7 trillion in obligations), and the Federal Reserve's emergency facilities. He designed and shepherded through Congress the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), originally conceived as a mechanism to purchase toxic mortgage assets from banks and eventually used to directly capitalise major financial institutions. The speed and scale of these interventions — improvised over weeks — prevented a disorderly financial system collapse. His memoir "On the Brink" (2010) provides a detailed insider account of the crisis. Paulson has since focused on environmental conservation, founding the Paulson Institute to promote economic and environmental collaboration.