The Texan oilman and real-life JR Ewing was a Bible-bashing racehorse owner whose ambitions matched his size
Nelson Bunker Hunt might have been born in El Dorado, Arkansas – which, come to think of it, was a pretty suitable place of origin for someone raised with money to burn – but spiritually, he was a Texan through and through, an oilman who was briefly a candidate for the title of the world’s richest man.
Nelson Bunker Hunt, who has died aged 88, was a multi-billionaire Texan oilman who, with his brother Herbert, attempted to corner the world silver market. They went spectacularly bankrupt, threatening to bring down the American financial system in the process, and were forced into a humiliating “fire sale” of their prized collections of coins, art and racehorses.
The Hunts’ fortune had been built up by their father, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, a farmer’s son from Illinois who became a professional poker player known as Arkansas Slim. Famous for his claim that “Money doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s only the way you keep the score”, HL Hunt went on to become a “wildcat” oilman (independent producer), forming a partnership with a man called “Dad” Joiner, who had discovered a massive oil field in east Texas (and later insisted that Hunt had cheated him). He built his company, Hunt Oil, into the largest independent producer of oil and natural gas in America and, by the time of his death in 1974, was one of America’s three richest men, alongside Howard Hughes and Paul Getty.
The empire Hunt had created was spread among the 12 living children he had fathered by three different wives, who had lived, dotted about the country, in blissful ignorance of one another’s existence. But the bulk of the family businesses were run by Bunker, Herbert and Lamar, sons of his first marriage to Lyda Bunker.
It was the rotund 21-stone “Bunker”, more than any of his siblings, who seemed to have inherited his father’s laconic way with words (his observation that “people who know how much they are worth generally aren’t worth much” became a favourite of the world’s super-rich) as well as his taste for gambling.
He built up stables of some 1,000 racehorses, including the thoroughbred mare Dahlia, who earned $1.5 million and won 10 group races during her racing career in Europe and the United States, and Exceller, a colt he bought for $25,000 who achieved career earnings of more than $1.6 million. In the 1970s he was reckoned to be worth up to $16 billion.
In 1973, however, Bunker and his brother Herbert embarked on an audacious attempt to corner the world’s silver market as a hedge against inflation and to diversify the family’s interests away from oil. Together with two Saudi princes, they set up a trading vehicle, and by 1979 had amassed about half the world’s deliverable supply. At one stage the brothers held shooting competitions among cowboys on their Dallas ranch, with winners awarded the opportunity to ride shotgun on aeroplanes delivering bullion to a high-security vault in Switzerland. “I wanted to invest in something I could get my hands on,” Bunker explained later.
The results were dramatic — and sudden. In 1979 the price for silver jumped from $6 per ounce to a record high of $48.70 per ounce – an increase of 712 per cent. But the hugely inflated price caused dealers to release a flood of silver on to the market. On March 27 1980, later known as Silver Thursday, the price collapsed to $10.80 per ounce and the conspirators found themselves saddled with commitments to buy more silver than they could afford, and with stocks paid for at inflated prices with money borrowed from brokers and banks. “A billion dollars ain’t what it used to be,” Bunker observed ruefully.
The Hunts’ inability to meet their obligations caused panic in the markets. Government officials feared that some large Wall Street brokerage firms and banks might collapse. The threat was so grave that Paul Volcker, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, reluctantly allowed the Hunts a billion-dollar credit line.
When oil prices followed silver on a downward slide, the Hunts filed for bankruptcy in an attempt to protect their assets. By early 1988, following years of lawsuits, civil charges, fines and damages claims, their fortune had reportedly dwindled to a mere $1 billion. In August that year a federal jury concluded that the brothers had conspired to manipulate the silver price.
Hunt (left) watched by Elizabeth Taylor as he receives a trophy at Laurel race track, Maryland, in 1976 (NEWSCOM)
Forced into personal bankruptcy that required them to liquidate assets, the brothers auctioned off immense collections of Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic coins, raising more than $30 million. Sotheby’s in New York sold their art collections, and they were even forced to offload household items, including an enamel teapot which went for $20. Most painful of all for Bunker, however, was the sale of 580 of his prize racehorses, including Dahlia, for $47 million.
As Bunker Hunt told Senate investigators when trying to explain his role in the debacle: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money.”
One of seven children, Nelson Bunker Hunt was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, on February 22 1926. A sister died in infancy while a brother would be incapacitated following a prefrontal lobotomy.
When Bunker was 12, his family moved to Dallas, where they lived in a replica of George Washington’s home, Mount Vernon, bordering an artificial lake. Despite their wealth, the Hunts were raised modestly, and Bunker was always conservative about how he spent money on himself. He did not smoke or drink, flew economy class, drove a battered Cadillac and always turned off the lights when leaving a room.
After dropping out of college, Bunker worked with his father and brothers in the oil business, but failed to impress in his early years, embarking on an ambitious international exploration programme which produced nothing but dry holes. He finally hit the big time in the early 1960s with the discovery of the Sarir oil field in Libya, with reserves estimated at 11 to 13 billion barrels. All of a sudden he found himself quoted, at least on paper, as the world’s wealthiest private individual.
He went on to build up his collection of racehorses and, as well as eight million acres of oil fields in Libya and offshore wells in the Philippines and Mexico, he owned skyscrapers, cattle ranches and mines around the world.
His fortunes received something of a setback, however, when Colonel Gaddafi nationalised his Libyan operations in 1973 – a shock that persuaded him of the need to invest in something “safe”. His solution was silver.
The first generation of Texas oil billionaires had nurtured the growth of America’s radical Right. Bunker followed in this tradition. A casual anti-Semite and evangelical Christian, he was close to the Reverend Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and supported such causes as the virulently anti-communist John Birch Society. Biographers claimed that Hunt’s silver dealings were fuelled by the fear of an imminent economic apocalypse caused by the machinations of communists and the American liberal establishment.
After bankruptcy proceedings Hunt was reported to have been left with nothing but his home, two ageing cars and personal belongings. In fact, though, he still had millions of dollars in trusts set up by his father.
In 1951 Nelson Bunker Hunt married Caroline Lewis, who survives him with their son and three daughters.
Nelson Bunker Hunt, born February 22 1926, died October 21 201
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