He lost his jet company in 2002, then bought it back for $42 million

Kenn Ricci walked into Raytheon's offices in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 2002 with $180 million in financing and expecting gratitude. Ricci, the founder of Flight Options, a company that sold shares in private jets, thought he had found a way to rescue a struggling joint venture and take full control of it himself.

He had merged Flight Options, which was barely breaking even, 50-50 with Raytheon's Traveler unit, a seller of shared jet flights that was losing $30 million a year. To handle a breakup, the partners had agreed to what Ricci called shareholders roulette, in which either side could name a price and the other had to buy or sell at that price. Ricci brought in investor Warburg Pincus, which valued the combined business at $360 million, so his half would cost $180 million.

That is when the deal turned against him. Instead of accepting his money, Raytheon executives decided Ricci must be trying to steal the business, and they used the same rule to buy him out. Ricci, who owned 16% of the company, was suddenly out. He still calls it the worst day of his life.

The loss was not only financial. Ricci said he had lost his passion for living and his vision for what came next. He was torn: he didn't want the company to do well without him, but didn't want it to fail either, since it was his idea and his friends still worked there. "You don't want the company to succeed without you," he said. With about 800 employees, most of them in Cleveland, he could not eat in a restaurant without being asked what had happened, so in 2003 he moved to Phoenix, choosing it over Denver and Los Angeles.

Six years later, Raytheon had lost $600 million on the business, which had become unionized and was deteriorating. The company called Ricci and asked if he wanted to take it off its hands. His answer, as he puts it, was that he wanted his company back no matter what condition it was in.

He bought it in December 2008, three months after the financial crisis hit that September, at what he calls the nadir of the crisis. The headline price was $135 million, but Ricci says the amount he paid, after taking on the company's payables and liabilities, was about $42 million. Ricci paid $15 million in cash and signed a three-year, $27 million personal note from the seller, backing it with a personal guarantee of everything he owned, including his home.