3. Sean Quinn & Family
£2,295m
Quinn Group
2008: £2,750m (-£455m)
Losing more than £800m by secretly buying 15% of Dublin's Anglo Irish Bank in the 24 months before its shares collapsed last year would sink most families.
But for serial entrepreneur Sean Quinn, and his five children, absorbing the biggest loss in Irish investment history was fairly painless.
Their insurance-to-building products Quinn Group made a £314m loss in 2007 but has £718m of net assets, a comfortable cushion.
The group's building materials business is now worth less than a third of its peak, with the more recession-proof insurance, packaging and property development in emerging markets dominant.
Some of the spectacularly mistimed gamble on Anglo Irish can be largely written off against tax on the group's past profits. But the write-off and less buoyant business saw the value of the Fermanagh-based Quinn Group fall £1.2bn last year to £2.1bn. We deduct the record £2.8m that Quinn Insurance was fined last year by the Irish financial regulator for non-disclosure of loans to the Quinn family related to their Anglo Irish investment.
Quinn, 63, who was personally fined £170,000, also had to resign as chair of the insurance company but remains executive chair of the overall group.
He is investing profits in shopping centres, offices and warehousing in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore in India, DIY hypermarkets and retail in Russia, and property in Eastern Europe. Increasingly, the children are holding these newly acquired assets in their own names and outside the main Quinn Group.