Paulson & Co.’s Recovery fund climbed 55 percent in the year’s first 11 months and its Partners Enhanced fund advanced 28 percent, people briefed on the returns said earlier this month. The Recovery fund was created to profit from a rebounding economy, while Partners Enhanced is the leveraged version of the firm’s merger strategy.

Armel Leslie, a spokesman for Paulson who works for WalekPeppercomm, declined to comment on the returns.

Paulson, best known for making $15 billion in 2007 betting against subprime mortgages, is benefiting from prescient bets on companies in takeovers, a strategy known as merger-arbitrage, and from investments in stocks that rallied as global central bank policies propped up markets.

The SkyBridge fund of funds invested $152 million in the Jana Nirvana Fund, a concentrated version of the stock vehicle run by Barry Rosenstein and David DiDomenico, during the second and third quarters, and added $55 million to its holdings in Daniel Loeb’s Third Point Ultra Ltd., filings show.

Pine River

SkyBridge has reduced its holdings in the Pine River Fixed Income Fund and JLP Credit Opportunity Cayman Fund Ltd. since March 31. The fund pulled all $60 million it had in the SPM Core Offshore Fund Ltd., which invests in mortgage debt, and withdrew its capital from funds run by Rajiv Sobti’s Karya Capital Management LP, a New York-based macro investor with a fixed- income background.

Suzanne Hallberg, a SkyBridge spokeswoman, declined to comment on the fund of funds, which gained 9.7 percent in the first 10 months of this year, according to a performance update. The Bloomberg Global Aggregate Hedge Fund Index, which tracks some 2,400 funds with about $470 billion in assets, rose 6.9 percent during the same period.

SkyBridge isn’t backing away from all debt-related strategies. The firm added to its holdings in several event- driven funds that focus on debt markets, including the Premium Point Mortgage Credit Fund and the Marathon European Credit Opportunity Fund LP.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, which prompted banks to cut back their proprietary trading, is creating more opportunity for independent managers to profit, according to Matt Quinn, director of research at Lee Financial Corp., a Dallas-based wealth management firm.

‘Great Place’