4. John Meriwether: Lost $5.8 Billion

John Meriwether is the founder of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund. LTCM had over $100 billion worth of assets. LTCM is best known for its ‘arbitrage strategy’ or ‘fixed income arbitrage,’ which boasted of diminishing risk level to zero but only theoretically. Meriwether and LTCM took a much uncalculated risk by investing in the financial markets of Russia, which were facing turmoil. This decision cost them heavily as the Russian markets did not bounce back. LTCM and Meriwether were left under a huge loss, about $4 billion. This amount now stands around $5 billion. In order to evade a bigger financial crisis, the U.S. government intervened and pumped $3.65 billion into LTCM.