SO you think you are feeling the pinch of the credit crunch? Meet the $1 billion men.

Seven bosses of the world’s most powerful investment banks have personally lost nearly $1 billion (£515m) between them as the share prices of their businesses have crashed.

James Cayne, who until leaving Bear Stearns last month was the longest-serving chief executive at any of the big Wall Street investment banks, has lost a paper fortune of more than $507m.

According to the latest filings at America’s Securities and Exchange Commission, Cayne, 73, owns nearly 5m shares in Bear Stearns. Twelve months ago, Bear Stearns’s share price hit highs of $170 but, after the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market forced global banks to write down $105 billion of investments, the stock has halved. Cayne led the bank to its only quarterly loss since it was founded in 1923.

The next biggest loser is Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, whose paper losses amount to $124m, despite heading the bank that weathered the storm of the credit crunch better than most of its competitors. The regulatory filings show that Blankfein has almost 2m shares in Goldman Sachs and their price has plummeted from last year’s high of $250 to $187 on Friday.

John Mack “The Knife”, chairman and chief executive of Morgan Stanley, is not far behind, having watched the value of his 2.7m shares plunge from $291m last year to $203m now.

Citigroup’s Chuck Prince, who was the first top banking executive to be axed as a result of the bank’s exposure to sub-prime losses, has taken a paper loss of $48m.

Other bosses’ losses included in the $1 billion, include Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, whose shares have dropped by $88m; Bank of America’s Kenneth Lewis with $48m of losses; and James Dimon, head of JP Morgan Chase, with $45m slashed from the value of his shares.

The figure would have been far larger if it had included Stan O’Neil, former head of Merrill Lynch, but his shareholdings are not registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Merrill’s share price has been among the hardest hit, almost halving in value from $95 last year to $52 on Friday.

New boss John Thain was forced last month to announce some $15 billion of sub-prime mortgage-related write-downs that led to the largest quarterly loss since the bank was founded 94 years ago.

Thain is one of just two of Wall Street’s biggest bankers who are in the black, though only because they arrived after their banks’ shares had already collapsed. Thain’s stock has risen in value by about $1m since he came, while Vikram Pandit, new boss at Citi, has made $2m as his 1m shares have crawled up, though the bank’s shares are still down by 52% on last year’s high.

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