Greatest Financial Pirates of All Time

George Soros

He has been tagged as a financial pirate and is feared in various countries in Asia, Europe and America. This famous currency speculator has made a billion-dollar in one day fortune for “breaking the back of the Bank of England” in 1992. Since then, he became a figure to be feared by countries trying to protect fragile currencies. In fact, he was blamed by both by the government of Thailand and Malaysia for causing the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

He looks in-depth at a country and tries to spot errors in valuation. Political policies in particular draw his interest. He uses his currency positions to "punish" countries whose policies are ignored in favor of positive economic data by most speculators. By pressuring these governments financially, he hopes to force political changes that might never come about otherwise.

Currently, he is the chairman of Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Institute. His support for the Solidarity labor movement in Poland, as well as the Czechoslovakian human rights organization Charter 77, contributed to ending Soviet Union political dominance in those countries. His funding and organization of Georgia's Rose Revolution was considered by Russian and Western observers to have been crucial to its success. In the United States, he is known for having donated large sums of money to political oppositions to defeat Pres. George W. Bush's bid for reelection. With an estimated current net worth of around $8.5 billion, he is currently ranked by Forbes as the 27th richest person in America.

Michael Milken

He is a notorious American financier in the 1980s who was nicknamed "The Junk Bond King". As an executive at investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, he was highly influential in developing the market for junk bonds, which in turn fueled the 1980s boom in corporate raids and hostile corporate takeovers. As such, he has been called both a financial innovator and the epitome of 1980s Wall Street greed. He amassed an enormous personal fortune, earning between between $200 million and $550 million a year at the height of his success.

But in 1989, he was indicted by a federal grand jury on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud. He eventually pled guilty and spent nearly two years in prison. He was banned for life from the securities industry. However, after his release from prison, he worked as a strategic consultant. This was in violation of his probation, and he was subsequently fined a $42 million for these actions. In 1993, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer; since then, he has devoted much of his time and resources to the pursuit of a cure for the disease.

Carl Icahn

He is an American billionaire financier, private equity investor and merciless corporate raider who can be credited with prompting more SEC regulation than any other individual. This NYU School of Medicine drop-out, who finished an A.B. Philosophy degree in Princeton in 1957, has developed a reputation as a great corporate raider after his hostile takeover of Trans World Airlines (TWA) in 1985. He was the creator of “greenmailing” and one of the primary reasons that disclosure rules became so strict. He buys controlling or even minority interests in companies that he considers to be undervalued. He then outlines his plan for creating value – ranging from spinning off profitable units, buying back stock, or simply cutting down excess overhead costs – and threatens a proxy war if his "advice" is not followed. Aside from TWA, he has taken substantial controls in various corporations as well including RJR Nabisco, Texaco, Phillips Petroleum, Western Union, Gulf & Western, Viacom, Uniroyal, Dan River, Marshall Field, E-II (Culligan and Samsonite), American Can, USX, Marvel Comics, Revlon, Imclone, Federal-Mogul, Fairmont Hotels, Kerr-McGee, Time Warner and Motorola.

After the market bust in the early 1990s, he played a lower-profile role in the financial world, preferring to be less public in his dealings. Nowadays, he works to create value for the shareholders, rather than stealing it from them; but a meeting with him is still enough to give underperforming and overpaid CEOs the shakes. His net worth is $14.5 billion as of 2007, making him the 18th richest man in America.

Peter Lynch

He is arguably the world's most famous mutual fund manager and also a noted corporate raider. Often described as a chameleon, he adapted to whatever investment style worked at the time – be it growth or value investing. He is a graduate of Boston College and studied finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

He was one of the first to uncover hidden gems such as Dunkin' Donuts, Pier 1 Imports and Taco Bell. He is most famous for when he started managing the Fidelity Magellan Fund in 1978. People began to criticize him once his fund surpassed $1 billion in assets in the early 1980s; nonetheless, the fund rose to about $14 billion less than seven years later. It was reported then that he was able to beat the S&P 500 Index benchmark for 11 years, achieving an annual average return of 29%.

He is also famous for several investment books including, "One Up On Wall Street" and "Beating The Street", which are widely considered to be mandatory reading for any investor.

John Pierpont Morgan

J.P. Morgan was an American financier, banker, philanthropist and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his era. During his lifetime it was said that God owned men's souls and J.P. Morgan owned the rest. The power that he wielded owes as much to timing as to his personal attributes. He was the primary banker for Wall Street, underwriting companies like General Electric and International Harvester at time when the American economy was getting ready to explode. In 1892, he arranged the merger of Edison General Electric and Thompson-Houston Electric Co. to form General Electric. After financing the creation of the Federal Steel Co., he merged the Carnegie Steel Co. and several other steel and iron businesses to form the United States Steel Corp. in 1901.

At the height of his career during the early 1900s, he had amassed financial investments in many large corporations and was one of the wealthiest men in the world. The moment when he was at his most powerful and terrifying, however, came during the Bank Panic of 1907. He personally gathered all the financial and political moguls – movers and shakers alike – at his mansion and forced them into locked-door negotiations to resolve the crises.

He died in Rome, Italy in 1913 at the age of 75.

Jesse Livermore

He is considered by many of today's top financial dealers and corporate raiders as the greatest trader who ever lived. His progress from office boy to Wall Street legend is probably the most fascinating of any of Wall Street's stories. He broke new ground in trading the market with his revolutionary techniques to trading in stocks and commodities.

He started his trading career during his teenage years, posting stock quotes at the Paine Webber brokerage in Boston. While working, he would write down certain hunches he had about future market prices, which he would check for accuracy later. With these humble beginnings, he began trading for himself. At the age of 15, he had earned profits of over $1,000 (which equates to about $20,000 today), mostly at “bucket shops” (places where people would enter trades, but no actual trades were executed; they were betting against the house). He was called Boy Plunger for he would regularly beat the bucket shops. Until such time that these bucket shops could no longer bear with him that he was eventually banned in trading with them. He then devoted his energies towards trading in legitimate markets.

He was famed for making and losing several multi-million dollar fortunes and short-selling during the stock market crashes in 1907 and 1929. Most notably, he was worth $3 million and $100 million after the 1907 and 1929 market crashes, respectively. He subsequently lost both fortunes. After the 1929 market crash, he suffered severe losses that led to his bankruptcy.

A lifelong history of clinical depression had become the dominant factor in his final years. On Nov. 28, 1940, at age 63, he finally decided to end his life. An important legacy he left for traders is a working philosophy for trading securities that emphasizes increasing the size of one's position as it goes in the right direction and cutting losses quickly.

L. R. A. K.

Pronounce as "elrak" or he may be simply called as "The Rock", the chief trader of KalTrade. He is famous for his rock solid market punches, nerve of steel, and strong gut feel that complement his complex trading acumen. He aspires to plummel the Street and beat the Market black and blue on a scale that is better than George Soros, Michael Milken and Warren Buffet's combined strikes.

Hence, he is adjudged to be the greatest of them all soon. :)