EVEN THE most successful investors can get it horribly wrong, as reclusive British tycoon Joe Lewis has just found out.

The septuagenarian billionaire currency trader - best known in Ireland for his tangential role in the Telecom affair in the early 1990s - last year built a stake approaching 10 per cent in Bear Stearns, the US investment bank weakened by the subprime crisis and seen as a takeover target.

The speculation was half right. JPMorgan set a deal to buy the stricken bank over the weekend, but at a knockdown $2 (€1.27) a share, implying a loss for Mr Lewis of more than $1 billion.

MF Global, a futures broker, was forced to deny rumours that Joseph Lewis, the UK-born billionaire who lost heavily on his Bear Stearns investment, was one of their clients.

The rumours had caused a wave of selling in MF's shares early yesterday. They were down as much as 70 per cent in morning trading.

Mr Lewis paid more than $100 a piece for the majority of his 11 million shares, according to US regulatory filings.

It is still unclear whether he had hedged the near 10 per cent holding.

A soccer industry dealmaker who knows Mr Lewis said he was not the kind of man to lose money.

"He certainly paid real money for that [ Bear Stearns stake] but where, and how he hedged - who knows," he said.