Nelson Bunker Hunt

Nelson Bunker Hunt (February 22, 1926 – October 21, 2014) was an American oil company executive. He was a billionaire whose fortune collapsed after he and his brothers William Herbert and Lamar tried to corner the world market in silver but were prevented by government intervention. He was also a thoroughbred horse breeder and a major sponsor of the John Birch Society.

Hunt was born in El Dorado, Arkansas, but lived most of his life in Dallas, Texas. He was the son of Lyda Bunker and oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, who set up Placid Oil, once one of the biggest independent oil companies, He had six siblings: Margaret Hunt Hill (1915–2007), H. L. Hunt III (1917–2005), Caroline Rose Hunt (1923–2018), Lyda Bunker Hunt (born and died in 1925), William Herbert Hunt (1929–2024), and Lamar Hunt (1932–2006). He was married to Caroline Lewis Hunt of Ruston, Louisiana, for 63 years until his death, and they had four children together. In October 2014, Hunt died at the age of 88. He had cancer and dementia.

Hunt played a significant role in the discovery and development of the oil fields in Libya, the more established oil enterprises' stake of which were nationalized by Muammar Gaddafi in 1973. This nationalization later resulted in the House of Lords decision in BP Exploration Co (Libya) v Hunt (No 2), [1983] 2 AC 352.

Hunt owned the Dallas-based Titan Resources Corporation, which is still involved in the exploration of oil in North Africa. He was chairman of Hunt Exploration and Mining Company (HEMCO).^{[citation needed]}

Beginning in the early 1970s, Hunt and his brothers William Herbert and Lamar began accumulating large amounts of silver on COMEX through Brodsky and Associates. By 1979, they had nearly cornered the global market. In the last nine months of 1979, the brothers profited by an estimated US$2–4 billion in silver speculation, with estimated silver holdings of 100 million troy ounces (3,100 t).

Primarily because of the Hunt brothers' accumulation of the precious metal, prices of silver futures contracts and silver bullion rose from $11 an ounce in September 1979 to $50 an ounce in January 1980. Silver prices ultimately collapsed to below $11 an ounce two months later. The largest single-day drop in the price of silver occurred on "Silver Thursday". In February 1985 the Hunt brothers were charged "with manipulating and attempting to manipulate the prices of silver futures contracts and silver bullion during 1979 and 1980" by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

In September 1988 the Hunt brothers filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Code largely due to lawsuits incurred as a result of their silver speculation.

In 1989, in a settlement with the CFTC, Nelson Bunker Hunt was fined $10 million and banned from trading in the commodity markets as a result of civil charges of conspiring to manipulate the silver market. This fine was in addition to a multimillion-dollar settlement to pay back taxes, fines and interest to the Internal Revenue Service for the same period. His brother William Herbert Hunt made a similar settlement.