Billionaires gone broke – Elizabeth Holmes, Vijay Mallya, Huang Wenyi and 8 more ultra-rich business tycoons who lost it all in a flash

Multimillion dollar yachts, mega-mansions for homes, private jets, fleets of cars and more – these men and women had it all and were worth billions. But a series of bad decisions, bad luck and other factors made them lose it all in a spectacular fashion, and these 0.001 per centers brutally became the 99 per cent.

Read the tragic but instructive tales of 11 billionaires who went bankrupt and lost it all.

Patricia Kluge

Patricia Kluge was once married to the richest man in the world, John Kluge, who had a personal wealth of US$5 billion in 1990. At the time of their divorce, she was left with just US$1 million in alimony, but she also received the lavish estate of Albemarle in the Virginia countryside. She took her chance and established the Kluge Estate Winery and Vineyard.

Kluge also entered the real estate business by taking a loan of US$65 million to build more than a dozen luxury houses, which later turned out to be her biggest mistake. The 2008 banking and housing crisis caused Kluge to default on her loans and she was forced to sell her Albemarle estate along with her every valuable possession.

Her estate, winery and vineyard was bought by Donald Trump for US$6 million.

Huang Wenyi

Huang Wenyi is the chairman of the China Jicheng Holdings, a Hong Kong-based umbrella-making company, a 75 per cent stake of which is owned by him and his wife Chen Jieyou. In a recent stock market dip, his company’s stock fell about 91 per cent in just two days, tanking US$1.9 billion off his personal wealth.

The high volatility of the Hong Kong stock market caused many other companies to loss billions in a stroke.