John Meriwether Net Worth | Celebrity Net Worth

What is John Meriwether’s Net Worth and Salary?

John Meriwether is an American hedge fund executive who has a net worth of $100 million.

John William Meriwether is an American financial executive and hedge fund manager best known for his role in founding Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) and JWM Partners. Prior to establishing these hedge funds, Meriwether built his reputation as the head of bond trading at Salomon Brothers, where he assembled an elite team of traders and academics that revolutionized fixed-income arbitrage strategies. His career has been marked by remarkable success followed by dramatic setbacks, most notably LTCM’s spectacular collapse in 1998, which threatened global financial markets and required a bailout orchestrated by the Federal Reserve. Despite this setback, Meriwether’s innovative approaches to arbitrage and his integration of academic theory with trading practice have left a lasting impact on Wall Street and financial markets worldwide.

Early Life and Education

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Meriwether grew up in a middle-class family and attended Northwestern University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business. He furthered his education at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, obtaining an MBA. His time at Chicago exposed him to the efficient market theories and quantitative approaches that would later influence his trading strategies. The University of Chicago was known for its free-market economic theories, which shaped Meriwether’s intellectual approach to financial markets.

Career at Salomon Brothers

Meriwether joined Salomon Brothers in 1974 and quickly rose through the ranks to become the head of the domestic fixed income arbitrage group. At Salomon, he created a specialized bond arbitrage group known informally as “the group” or “the arbitrage group,” recruiting brilliant traders and academics including Larry Hilibrand, Victor Haghani, and later, future Nobel Prize winners Myron Scholes and Robert Merton.

Under Meriwether’s leadership, this group pioneered sophisticated arbitrage strategies that exploited small price discrepancies between related securities, particularly in the government bond market. Their mathematical models and disciplined approach to risk management generated consistent profits for Salomon Brothers throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

Meriwether’s tenure at Salomon was disrupted in 1991 when the firm became embroiled in a Treasury bond scandal. Though Meriwether himself was not directly involved in the wrongdoing, he resigned from Salomon Brothers during the subsequent management shakeup, despite attempts by Warren Buffett (who had stepped in as interim chairman) to retain him.

Long-Term Capital Management

In 1994, John Meriwether launched Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), assembling an elite team that included former Salomon Brothers colleagues and two Nobel Prize-winning economists, Myron Scholes and Robert Merton. Backed by Wall Street’s unwavering confidence, the fund raised an unprecedented $1.25 billion in initial capital—a record at the time for a hedge fund launch. LTCM set out to conquer the markets using quantitative models that married academic theory with real-world arbitrage strategies, often described as a “black box” of brilliance.

The firm’s investment strategy revolved around convergence trades and relative value arbitrage, particularly in global fixed income markets. It sought to exploit pricing inefficiencies between securities that were expected to converge over time. These trades offered small margins, so LTCM deployed extreme leverage—sometimes exceeding 25 to 1—to magnify profits. In its early years, the strategy worked like magic: LTCM returned about 40% annually, drawing even more capital and praise. At its peak, the fund managed more than $100 billion in assets (including borrowed funds) on a relatively modest equity base.

But in 1998, the house of cards collapsed. When Russia defaulted on its debt in August of that year, it sparked a global flight to safety. Market relationships that LTCM’s models treated as stable suddenly broke down. Correlations across asset classes spiked, and the fund’s trades—designed to benefit from normal conditions—moved violently against them. With its positions unraveling simultaneously across multiple markets, LTCM’s massive leverage turned a bad month into a near-death event for the global financial system.

As panic spread, the potential collapse of LTCM threatened systemic failure. Fearing a chain reaction through the financial system, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York convened a crisis meeting of Wall Street’s top firms. In a dramatic act of financial triage, a consortium of 14 banks and institutions—including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Merrill Lynch—agreed to a $3.6 billion bailout to unwind LTCM’s positions in an orderly fashion. Though not a direct government bailout, it marked one of the most pivotal moments in modern financial history—a warning shot about the dangers of leverage, complexity, and unchecked hubris in global finance.Later Career and Legacy

Following LTCM’s collapse, Meriwether founded JWM Partners in 1999, employing similar strategies but with lower leverage. This fund also encountered difficulties during the 2008 financial crisis and closed in 2009. He later established JM Advisors Management, a smaller investment management firm.

Meriwether’s career illustrates both the potential and pitfalls of sophisticated quantitative trading strategies. His pioneering work in fixed-income arbitrage influenced how Wall Street approaches relative value trading and risk management. The LTCM crisis highlighted the limitations of mathematical models in extraordinary market conditions and led to increased scrutiny of hedge fund operations and leverage.

Despite the controversies, Meriwether’s ability to identify talent and build elite trading teams remains recognized throughout the financial industry. Many successful hedge fund managers and financial executives trained under his mentorship, extending his influence beyond his own trading operations.

Meriwether’s story has become a cautionary tale in finance, illustrating how even the most sophisticated models and experienced traders can underestimate market risks, particularly during periods of stress when historical correlations break down.

Real Estate

In 1987, John paid $800,000 for a 40-acre property in North Salem, New York, that features a 6,000 square foot farmhouse that was constructed in 1870. Today, this home is worth $4-6 million.