In 2008, Ken Griffin was losing $100 million.
Not in a year. Not in a month. Every single week.
At 40 years old, the man who had been called a "boy genius" was watching his empire, Citadel, bleed to death. The global financial system was collapsing, and Griffin was caught in the center of the storm.
The firm’s flagship funds were down 55%. Competitors were already circling his top talent. Investors were screaming for their money. The press was essentially writing his professional obituary.
He was being called a "Dead Man Walking.”
"We were losing enormous amounts of money every day," Griffin later admitted. "I wasn't sleeping. I was just fighting."
He had two choices:
1) Close the doors, preserve what was left of his pride, and walk away.
2) Do the unthinkable.
Griffin chose to fight. He made the most controversial decision of his career: he gated the funds. He told his investors they couldn't take their money out.
It was a move that made him the most hated man in finance for a moment. But it wasn't about greed. It was about survival. He knew that if he sold his positions in a panicked market, the firm would vanish forever.
He stayed in the "war room" for 17 weeks straight. He personally spoke to every single counterparty. He stopped taking a salary. He worked until his eyes were bloodshot, rebuilding the firm's entire risk model from scratch while the world was still screaming that he was dead.
It took three years of grueling work just to get back to even.
But because he didn't break in 2008, he built something indestructible. In 2022, while the rest of the world was struggling, Griffin’s firm made $16 billion in profit, the largest annual gain for a hedge fund in history.
The lesson is a cold truth for every leader:
Your reputation isn't built when the sun is shining. It is built in the middle of the storm, when everyone expects you to sink, and you decide to keep rowing.
Don't fear the crisis. It’s the only time you can prove who you really are.
