Hunt, Nelson ‘Bunker’ (1926– )

US oil magnate. Hunt and his brother, William Herbert Hunt, used millions of dollars made by their father in the family oil business to launch one of the 20th century's biggest financial gambles by trying to corner the international silver market in 1979. Hunt's buying strategy pushed the price of silver up to over $50 an ounce, before the market collapsed (reportedly to $10.80 an ounce in March in 1980), causing countless losses for speculators.

Hunt's silver losses amounted to more than $1 billion, and by 1987 his liabilities had grown to nearly $2.5 billion against assets of $1.5 billion. After a US federal court found the brothers guilty of conspiracy to manipulate the market in 1988, Hunt filed one of the largest personal bankruptcy cases in US history. He received a lifetime ban from trading in commodity futures and a $10 million fine from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 1989.

Hunt was born in Texas, the son of US oil billionaire H L Hunt, a professional poker player who founded the Hunt Oil Co. in 1934, which was reputed to be the largest independent producer of oil and gas in the USA. Based at the family home on the ‘Circle T Ranch’, Hunt was a keen commodity speculator, and was said to have built up a large position in the soya bean market in the 1970s.

In 1973 Hunt decided to acquire precious metals as a hedge against inflation, and since gold could not be held by private citizens at the time, he began to buy silver in large quantities; the price was then about $1.95 an ounce. In 1979 he and his brother formed a silver pool with a group of wealthy Arabs. In a short period of time they had amassed more than 200 million ounces of silver, equivalent to half the world's deliverable supply, and the silver price had risen from about $5 to over $50 an ounce. When, in early 1980, the New York Commodity Exchange halted trading and the Federal Reserve Bank intervened to protect the banking system, the price of silver began to slide. Hunt was unable to meet his margin calls (the deposit required by brokers) and faced demands to pay off on silver contracts. He started selling, but the price of silver plunged, crippling the market and its investors.