Nelson Bunker Hunt, the Texas oilman once considered the world’s richest man before his fortunes were undone by Muammar Qaddafi and his own epic overreaching in the silver market, has died at the age of 88.
The Dallas Morning News reported that Hunt died at an assisted-living centre in Dallas suffering from dementia and cancer. Hunt's sister-in-law, Nancy Hunt, confirmed the death on Tuesday night.
At his peak, Hunt owned cattle, hundreds of race horses, ranches, real estate, sugar companies, banks, valuable art and the Shakey’s pizza restaurant chain, in addition to the family’s vast oil holdings. He had a reputation for buying many of those assets based on a hunch, rather than research.
But a huge, soured bet on the silver market by Hunt and his brother, Herbert, led to legal problems and bankruptcy.
The holdings grew to nearly US$4.5 billion by January 1980, and he and Herbert lost more than $1bn in March 1980 when the price of silver collapsed.
The brothers agreed to lifetime bans from trading in commodities futures and a $10 million penalty with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which alleged that they manipulated the price of silver.
Sliding prices for oil, land and commodities further dented their fortunes.
Hunt filed for bankruptcy protection in 1988, and much of his remaining fortune was liquidated to pay creditors and the Internal Revenue Service, the federal tax collection agency.
Hunt, born in El Dorado, Arkansas, on February 22, 1926, was one of seven children in the “first family” of legendary HL Hunt, one of the pioneers of the first Texas oil boom who left behind a multibillion-dollar fortune and Placid Oil, once one of the biggest independent oil companies.
He went abroad to make his mark in the oil business in the 1950s and found little or no success in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia but then tried Libya, where he scored big.
Hunt eventually controlled 8 million acres in a field there estimated to have been three times the size of the East Texas field that gave birth to the Texas oil boom. He was said to be worth between $8bn and $16bn, and was considered to be the richest man in the world.
Then Qaddafi came along. He overthrew Libya’s king in 1969, and by 1973 had nationalised Hunt Oil’s Libyan operations.
* with agencies
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