American financiers

Michael Robert Milken (born July 4, 1946) is an American financier. He is known for his role in the development of the market for high-yield bonds ("junk bonds"), and his conviction and sentence following a guilty plea on felony charges for violating U.S. securities laws. Milken's compensation while head of the high-yield bond department at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s exceeded $1 billion over a four-year period, a record for U.S. income at that time. With a net worth of US$6 billion as of 2022, he is among the richest people in the world.Milken was indicted for racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 in an insider trading investigation. In a plea bargain, he pleaded guilty to securities and reporting violations but not to racketeering or insider trading. Milken was sentenced to ten years in prison, fined $600 million (although his personal website claims $200 million) and permanently barred from the securities industry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. His sentence was later reduced to two years for cooperating with testimony against his former colleagues and for good behavior. Milken was pardoned by President Donald Trump on February 18, 2020.
Since his release from prison, he has become known for his charitable donations. He is co-founder of the Milken Family Foundation, chairman of the Milken Institute, and founder of medical philanthropies funding research into melanoma, cancer, and other life-threatening diseases. A prostate cancer survivor, Milken has devoted significant resources to research on the disease.

Thomas Mellon Evans (September 8, 1910 – July 17, 1997) was an American financier who was one of the country's early corporate raiders, as well as a philanthropist and Thoroughbred racehorse owner and breeder who won the 1981 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes.

Shearn Moody Jr. (May 23, 1933 – June 25, 1996) was an American financier, entrepreneur, and philanthropist from Galveston, Texas. He was heir to a financial empire as well as a convicted felon and originator of the Moody Gardens resort complex.
Moody was also the grandson of insurance and financial tycoon William Lewis Moody Jr.

Joshua Kushner (born June 12, 1985) is an American businessman, heir, and investor. He is the founder and managing partner of the venture capital firm Thrive Capital, co-founder of Oscar Health, and the son of real estate developer Charles Kushner. He is the brother of Jared Kushner, son-in-law and former senior advisor to former U.S. President Donald Trump. He is a minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies.

Harold Clark Simmons (May 13, 1931 – December 29, 2013) was an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist whose banking expertise helped him develop the acquisition concept known as the leveraged buyout (LBO) to acquire various corporations. He was the owner of Contran Corporation and of Valhi, Inc., (a NYSE traded company about 90% controlled by Contran). As of 2006, he controlled five public companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange: NL Industries; Titanium Metals Corporation, the world's largest producer of titanium; Valhi, Inc., a multinational company with operations in the chemicals, component products, Waste Control Specialists (waste management), titanium metals industries; CompX International, manufacturer of ergonomic products, and Kronos Worldwide, leading producer and marketer of titanium dioxide.

Reginald F. Lewis (December 7, 1942 – January 19, 1993), was an American businessman. He was one of the richest Black American men in the 1980s, and the first African-American to build a billion-dollar company: TLC Beatrice International Holdings Inc.In 1993, Forbes listed Lewis among the 400 richest Americans, with a net worth estimated at $400 million.

Peter Lynch (born January 19, 1944) is an American investor, mutual fund manager, author and philanthropist. As the manager of the Magellan Fund at Fidelity Investments between 1977 and 1990, Lynch averaged a 29.2% annual return, consistently more than double the S&P 500 stock market index and making it the best-performing mutual fund in the world. During his 13-year tenure, assets under management increased from US$18 million to $14 billion.A proponent of value investing, Lynch wrote and co-authored a number of books and papers on investing strategies, including One Up on Wall Street, published by Simon & Schuster in 1989, which sold over one million copies. He coined a number of well-known mantras of modern individual investing, such as "invest in what you know" and "ten bagger". Lynch has been described as a "legend" by the financial media for his performance record.

Gordon Peter Getty (born December 20, 1933) is an American businessman and classical music composer, the fourth child of oil tycoon J. Paul Getty. His mother, Ann Rork, was his father's fourth wife. When his father died in 1976, Gordon assumed control of Getty's US$ 2 billion trust. His net worth was $2.1 billion in September 2020, making him number 391 on the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest Americans.