People

Tom Saunders looks at how three very different women – Shahrzad Rafati, Trinny Woodall and Anne Boden –  have grown successful businesses.

Kweku Adoboli's risky trading and his desperate attempts to cover it up wiped £2.7bn off UBS’s market capitalisation.

Janet Yellen, the former US central-bank chief is back, this time as US Treasury secretary. Donald Trump wondered whether she was too short for the jo…

Robert Schuyler was known as “America’s first railroad king” issued millions of dollars' worth of fraudulent shares in his company, and kept the money…

Boardroom battles, bribery convictions, feuds, kidnapping – the Kwoks’ Hong Kong property empire has seen the lot. But for all the drama, they have te…

Stockbroker Michael Meehan manipulated the markets, driving stock prices up and making a mint.

Philip Green’s empire has collapsed, taking great chunks of the high street with it. In the Noughties his Topshop chain was called Britain’s favourite…

Meyer Blinder’s brokerage firm cold-called unsuspecting punters and pumped shares in fraudulent shell companies while stiffing them with huge commiss…

Dolly Parton, the warm-hearted chanteuse from Tennessee, blends old-fashioned etiquette with openness and is loved by millions. She also has a very sh…

When the Royal British Bank fell on hard times, founder John MacGregor started falsifying the accounts and paying dividends out of capital. The bank f…

Ugur Sahin and Özlem Türeci are an unassuming Turkish-German couple who had already made their fortune as biotech entrepreneurs when a strange new vi…

Eton-educated William Snow, AKA William Strahan, inherited a huge fortune and joined the family bank. On the face of it he was a pillar of respectable…

Lawrence Stroll made his fortune in fashion and has a passion for Ferraris and motorsport. When he saw the greatest luxury car brand in the world stru…

Ronald Perelman acquired a fortune as a dealmaker during the 1980s takeover boom. Now he seems to be quietly selling up.

Donald Kendall was there to serve Nikita Khrushchev a Pepsi during a famous cold war détente with Richard Nixon. He went on to become a 20th-century m…

Twenty-five years ago, Craig Newmark lost his job at a brokerage and fired off an email to friends. That seeded a venture, Craigslist, that dominates …

The Independent West Middlesex Fire and Life Assurance Company (IWM) offered annuities and life insurance policies at rates that proved too good to be…

Mukesh Ambani is already the richest man in India by a large margin, but his ambitions do not end there. He wants India to be at the front of the worl…

John Factor sold worthless penny stocks through a boiler room operation, ramping the price via his financial newsletters. But he was never held to ac…

The supermarket’s new owners are Mohsin and Zuber Issa, two brothers from Blackburn who started with a rundown petrol station 20 years ago. But their …

Thomas Farrow set up his eponymous bank in 1901, offering high interest rates to small savers. After falsifying the accounts and collapsing the bank, …

Reed Hastings turned Netflix – a DVD rental service rejected by Blockbuster – into a global streaming giant that has redefined the entertainment indus…

Alan Bond built an empire that encompassed brewing, mining, television on unsustainable amounts of debt, which led to his downfall and imprisonment.

Trevor Milton wanted to be the next Elon Musk, and planned to revolutionise transport with hydrogen-powered trucks. His dreams are unravelling amid al…