LTCM had four co-founders - Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, who were famous for developing the Black-Scholes-Merton model of deriving option prices, and later also went on to win a Nobel Prize; David Mullins Jr., who served as the Vice Chairman of the US Fed from 1991 to 1994; and John Meriwether, who headed Salomon Brother's bond trading desk when it was caught in a bond auction scandal. After a few years of strong returns, LTCM quickly lost those returns and much more.