Oil crash wipes out US$1.3 trillion

New York

IT'S the oil crash few saw coming, and few have been spared as it erased US$1.3 trillion, the equivalent of Mexico's annual GDP, in little more than a year.

Take billionaire Carl Icahn. When crude was at its peak in June 2014, the activist investor's stake in Chesapeake Energy Corp was worth almost US$2 billion. Today, oil has lost more than half its value, Chesapeake is the worst performer in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index and Mr Icahn has a paper loss of US$1.3 billion. The S&P 500, by contrast, is up 6.9 per cent in that time.