Richard Peery made his fortune developing Silicon Valley office parks. John Paulson became a billionaire by betting against securities tied to risky home loans. The available public records and reliable reporting do not establish a business partnership, family relationship, or shared investment between them. The John who built a real estate business with Peery was John Arrillaga.
In 2006, Peery and Arrillaga sold 119 commercial buildings in five California cities. A year later, Paulson’s investment firm was positioned to profit as mortgage securities lost value. The deals came close together in time, but each grew out of a different career and a different corner of the property market.
At a Glance
| Detail | Richard Peery | John Paulson |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Richard Taylor Peery | John Alfred Paulson |
| Age in November 2026 | 88, according to Forbes | 70 |
| Early roots | Raised in a family with ties to Palo Alto, California | Born December 14, 1955, in Queens, New York |
| Education | Bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University | Finance degree from New York University in 1978 and Harvard MBA in 1980 |
| Principal business | Peery-Arrillaga, commercial real estate | Paulson & Co., investment management |
| Best-known transaction | The 2006 sale of 119 Silicon Valley buildings with Arrillaga | The 2007 bet against subprime mortgage securities |
Richard Peery’s Childhood and First Businesses
Richard “Dick” Peery grew up with two siblings, David Rich Peery and Nancy Peery Marriott. Their parents were Horace Taylor Peery and Mary Almira Rich Peery. His father rose to vice president at Bank of America before turning to real estate. A Brigham Young University account records Richard’s memories of clearing lots and cleaning out buildings as a boy. When he suggested that the family needed a carport, his father told him to figure out how to build one.
Peery also found ways to earn money on his own. Forbes reports that he operated gumball machines on the Stanford campus while in middle school and started a miniature golf course as a teenager. He later earned a bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University and entered Stanford’s MBA program, which he left before graduating. His exact birth date and birthplace are not publicly verified.
The family property business gave him experience on a larger scale. His father founded Peery & Co. in 1957, and Richard took on management of his father’s property portfolio. Brigham Young University traces the roots of Peery-Arrillaga to that earlier company. The partnership Richard formed with Arrillaga in the 1960s was the next stage of a business that already had a foothold in the Bay Area.
How Peery and Arrillaga Turned Orchards Into Office Parks
Peery and Arrillaga bought farmland and fruit orchards around Stanford and developed small office parks. Stanford’s account of Arrillaga’s career identifies Intel, Apple, Facebook, and Google among the companies that eventually leased space from their firm. The scale of the partnership became especially clear when the two developers sold a substantial part of their portfolio.
In May 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that RREEF, a Deutsche Bank real estate investment business, had acquired 119 buildings across Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Milpitas, and San Jose. The portfolio covered 337 acres and included 5.3 million square feet of offices and research space. Many of the buildings were designed for several smaller tenants. One lease notice filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows what the deal meant on the ground. The Peery-Arrillaga joint venture transferred its landlord interest in more than 104,000 square feet at a property called Maude 5.
The buyer and seller did not announce a price at the time. The Chronicle reported an industry estimate of about $1.1 billion, a figure Forbes later used in its profile of Peery. The firm retained nearly three million square feet of Silicon Valley property after the sale, according to real estate trade publication Inman. Arrillaga died in January 2022 at age 84.
Richard and Mimi Peery’s Family and Giving
Peery met Mildred DeWitt, known as Mimi, through a Stanford congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She had studied elementary education at Brigham Young University and was teaching in San Jose. They married in 1966 at the church’s temple in Mesa, Arizona, and raised four children in Palo Alto.
Mimi died on July 14, 2026, at age 86. Her family’s obituary names Richard as her surviving husband after 60 years of marriage. It also names their children, Dennis, Jason, Jennifer, and David, and recalls a home where Mimi hosted recitals and encouraged her children to play music.
The couple joined Peery’s sister Nancy and her husband, Richard Marriott, in providing a $3 million endowment to establish Brigham Young University’s H. Taylor Peery Institute of Financial Services. The gift honored Richard and Nancy’s father. Richard’s son David is also involved in the family’s giving. Forbes identifies him as the head of the Peery Foundation, a private grantmaker that has supported organizations in the Bay Area and abroad.
John Paulson’s Path From Queens to Wall Street
John Paulson was born to Alfred Paulson and Jacqueline Boklan Paulson. His father came from Ecuador, where John had one of his first experiences running a business. He initially studied philosophy in college, then moved to Ecuador after his first year and began supplying clothing and decorative goods to American retailers. By age 19, he employed about 50 people, according to Harvard Business School. Paulson said the operation grew beyond what he knew how to manage, prompting him to return to school.
He graduated from NYU with a finance degree in 1978 and earned his Harvard MBA in 1980 He started as a consultant at Boston Consulting Group, moved to Odyssey Partners, and became a managing director in mergers and acquisitions at Bear Stearns. He went on to become a partner at Gruss Partners before founding Paulson & Co. in 1994.
His firm initially focused on opportunities created by events such as mergers. The work called for assessing whether a deal would go through and how its outcome might affect the price of a security. By the mid-2000s, Paulson had turned his attention to the risks building up in the mortgage market.
The Subprime Bet and the ABACUS Case
Paulson’s firm used credit default swaps to take positions against securities backed by subprime mortgages. The firm paid for contracts that could gain value as the underlying mortgage securities deteriorated. When borrowers began defaulting and mortgage bonds fell in value, those positions generated billions. Reuters later reported that Paulson personally earned about $4 billion from the bet in 2007.
One part of that broader strategy became the subject of an SEC enforcement case. The agency alleged that Goldman Sachs marketed a product called ABACUS 2007-AC1 without telling investors that Paulson’s firm had helped select the mortgage securities the deal referenced and had taken a position against it.
Goldman agreed in July 2010 to pay $550 million to settle the SEC charges. The bank acknowledged that its marketing materials were incomplete and settled without admitting or denying the allegations. The SEC brought that case against Goldman Sachs and one of its employees, Fabrice Tourre. Paulson and his firm were outside the list of defendants in that enforcement action.
Paulson’s Family, Business Roles, and Recent Giving
Paulson married Jenica “Jenny” Zaharia in 2000. They had two daughters, Giselle and Danielle. In May 2026, Bloomberg Law reported that the couple agreed to resolve their divorce case and dismiss a separate lawsuit in which Jenica alleged that Paulson had concealed assets through trusts. The settlement terms were undisclosed. Paulson and Alina de Almeida welcomed a daughter, Jacqueline, in 2025.
In 2020, Paulson began returning outside investors’ capital and converting his hedge fund business into a family office. He continued to take on public company roles. Bausch Health identified him as its board chair in July 2026. He also briefly figured in the search for a U.S. Treasury secretary after the 2024 election, withdrawing from consideration because of financial obligations, according to Reuters.
Paulson and his foundation announced a $100 million gift to the Central Park Conservancy in 2012. Harvard received a $400 million endowment gift in 2015 for its School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which now bears his name. He also gave $100 million to NYU for the academic complex now known as the Paulson Center.
On October 17, 2026, Paulson announced a $250 million gift to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to support engineering, medicine, and trauma recovery. The university said it was the largest donation in its history and brought his total support to $296 million. It announced plans to name its Mount Scopus campus for Alina and John Paulson.
What Their Net Worth Estimates Measure
In early November 2026, Forbes estimated Peery’s net worth at $3.4 billion and Paulson’s at $11.3 billion. Peery’s estimate reflects wealth built through commercial property. Paulson’s reflects a fortune built through investment management and his own investments. Both figures are estimates that can change as assets are revalued. The reported price of Peery’s 2006 portfolio sale was the value of a transaction involving two business partners, while the assets Paulson’s firm managed included money it invested on behalf of clients.
The record of Peery’s career is especially tangible in a lease such as Maude 5, which shows how an office park built over decades changed hands. Paulson’s defining trade left a different kind of record, in contracts that gained value as mortgage bonds fell. Together, those records explain how two men associated with American real estate made their money in very different ways.
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