The year 2008 was disastrous for the financial world as credit crunch wreaked havoc from Iceland to New Zealand leaving some top investment houses bankrupt.

Markets and currencies around the world tumbled as the crisis dealt a severe blow to the dollar and set the oil market on fire.

The year will be remembered as a nightmare by some of the richest souls who were left poorer by several billions of dollars during the period.

Dozens of the wealthiest lost huge amounts, but 10 distinguish themselves for some of the biggest flops, according to a Forbes report released yesterday.

The biggest loser of all was Anil Ambani. Touted on the cover of Forbes 2008 billionaires issue for having added $24 billion to his fortune in one year, Ambani has dropped $30 billion since then. But don’t worry too much. His Reliance Entertainment is investing $500 million in a new studio venture with Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks. Plus, he remains quite wealthy, worth $12 billion That’s something many others can’t claim.

More than 300 of the 1,125 billionaires Forbes tallied on its annual list last March have since lost at least $1 billion; several dozen lost more than $5 billion. The 10 richest from its 2008 rankings dropped some $150 billion of wealth, dragged down by steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, estranged brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani and property baron K.P. Singh, who together dropped $100 billion. America’s 25 biggest billionaire losers of 2008 lost a combined $167 billion.

But even in such an awful year, the stories of a few billionaires and now former billionaires stand out as particularly dreadful.

Take David Ross, one of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs. Earlier this month, Ross notified four public companies in which he was a major shareholder and director that he had borrowed against his shares to fund real estate investments that had soured. He will likely have to sell some of those stakes to pay off his debts. So far he has resigned from three of the four boards and stepped down from his post as an Olympics adviser.

His fortune, which Forbes estimated at $1.4 billion in March, is now worth about $150 million.

Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson, former chairman and a large shareholder in Landsbanki, Iceland’s second largest bank, saw the firm seized in October as the worst of the credit crisis tore through the island nation. The failure wiped out his $1.1 billion fortune. He has since had to put his holding company, Hansa, into voluntary liquidation and is selling his UK soccer team, West Ham.

Russians were some of the biggest losers in the past year. Vladimir Lisin’s Novolipetsk Iron and Steel is down three-fourths since its June peak. Dmitry Rybolovlev’s fertilizer company, Uralkali, has fallen 90 percent since it peaked around the same time.

But those losses pale compared with the troubles facing Oleg Deripaska. In March he was the world’s ninth richest person and Russia’s richest man, with a fortune estimated to be worth $28 billion.