The biggest losers
Even billionaires get the blues.
Sure, you've lost a lot of dough in the stock market's worst year since the Bronze Age. So has everyone. But a few well-known billionaires with local ties are experiencing the kinds of losses that are hard to even imagine.
How bad is it? I'm not even sure who among them are really billionaires anymore. These are their stories.
Sheldon Adelson. About a year ago, Adelson was considered the third-richest person in America and he didn't bother hiding his ambition to move up the list. It seems like a long time ago.
Adelson, who famously began his business career selling newspapers on a Dorchester street corner, has had a tough year in the casinos. He owns more than 60 percent of Las Vegas Sands Corp., whose shares have tanked by 95 percent this year.
Las Vegas Sands was in the midst of a hugely ambitious expansion in Macau and Singapore when the bottom fell out of the previously reliable gambling industry. Adelson, who started the year with about $30 billion worth of Las Vegas Sands stock in his pocket, directly owns common shares worth about $1.5 billion now.
Adelson's bad year isn't just about paper losses. He's had to pour money into Las Vegas Sands to keep it out of bankruptcy: $475 million in September and another $525 million more recently. Who says the house always wins?
Adelson, 75, isn't the only unhappy billionaire in Vegas. Kirk Kerkorian's controlling interest in MGM Mirage lost 85 percent of its value. These were the same shares Kerkorian used as collateral to buy Ford Motor Co., another noisy investment wreck.
Sumner Redstone. At 85, Redstone remains as cantankerous as ever. But not nearly so rich.
The media mogul originally from Boston controls CBS Inc. and Viacom Inc. through National Amusements. The prices of those stocks have plunged 76 percent and 62 percent, respectively, so far this year. If only that was the end of the story.
Redstone was forced to sell $233 million worth of CBS and Viacom shares last month in order to meet margin calls. National Amusements is struggling with $1.6 billion of debt. The New York Times recently questioned whether Redstone was still a billionaire. It's hard to tell.
Redstone also owns 87 percent of the money-losing entertainment software company Midway Games, whose shares have sunk 87 percent to penny-stock levels this year.
Now Redstone is trying to restructure all that debt weighing down National Amusements. He swears he won't sell any more shares of CBS or Viacom to do it. Others speculate he'll unload CBS entirely, if necessary.
Did I mention he's still feuding with daughter Shari and filed to divorce his second wife last month? If the late Aaron Spelling came back to produce another prime time soap opera, it would be called "Redstone."
Peter Nicholas and John Abele. The cofounders of Boston Scientific Corp. have been taking it in the portfolio ever since their Natick medical instruments company lost by winning in 2006, when it outbid Johnson & Johnson to buy Guidant Corp. for $27 billion.
Sure, Boston Scientific shares have been heading mostly south ever since. But the real pain started last month. Nicholas and Abele were forced to sell big blocks of stocks at prices about 75 percent below the value of Boston Scientific shares at the time of the Guidant deal in 2006. A paper loss is one thing. A realized loss, executed under duress no less, is something very different.
A company statement last month described the circumstances this way: Nicholas and Abele faced large margin calls they thought they could cover with money tied up at Lehman Brothers Holdings. Once Lehman filed for bankruptcy, the money got tied up. Plan B involved liquidating collateral, which was Boston Scientific stock.
Nicholas and Abele sold Boston Scientific shares on Oct. 10 and have continued in dribs and drabs ever since. The pair have sold about 52 million shares over that stretch, leaving them with a combined 75 million shares. Those 52 million shares had been worth about $350 million more when Boston Scientific bought Guidant in 2006. At Wednesday's closing price of $6.06 per share, the remaining Nicholas/Abele interest in Boston Scientific was worth about $460 million.
And you thought you had a bad year.
Steven Syre is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at syre@globe.com. 