Hello and welcome. You are listening to Patrick Boyle on Finance, a podcast exploring ideas from quantitative finance, examining events occurring in markets right now and financial history to see what lessons can be taken away, including interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world of finance. To learn more about the podcast, visit onfinance.org.

According to Forbes magazine, there are 2,75 billionaires in the world today. The top five

industries where they made their money are finance, technology,

manufacturing, retail and healthcare. It's rare to become a billionaire, but even more unusual to

reach that level and then lose everything, but it's not unheard of. Today we'll look at 10 one-time

billionaires who later went bankrupt,

and one whose net worth fell from $8 billion to $2 million. Some of the people on the list

lost their money through unfortunate investments, some through engaging in criminal activity.

One gained her billions through divorce and then

squandered it all. And one just gave it all away. Okay, so first up we have Anil Ambani.

Anil Abani's father died without leaving a will in 2002, with a net worth of $3 billion.

A feud erupted between Anil and his brother Mukesh over who would run the family businesses.

Their mother finally stepped in in splitting the family owned businesses between the two brothers.

By 2008, Enil was listed by Forbes as the sixth richest person in the

world with a net worth of $42 billion. His fortunes began their decline in 2011 after a number

of corruption scandals. Anil gained notoriety as one of the fastest destroyers of shareholder wealth in the last hundred years,

as his companies declined in value by more than 90% since their formation.

In 2019, Anil was held in contempt of court for not paying the debt that his company owed to Swedish telecoms firm Erickson,

that he had personally guaranteed.

The court gave him a month to come up with the money, otherwise he would go to jail.

He was rescued by his older brother, Mukesh, who by that point was the wealthiest man in

Asia and is one of the ten wealthiest people

...