Anthony Scaramucci fist bumps investors as he makes his way through a poolside party at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas on a May evening.

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates LP, boasts 15 percent annualized returns over two decades for his main hedge fund and 25.3 percent this year (through Aug. 31) amid extraordinary economic turmoil. He runs more money than any of his macro rivals.

In 1961, Martin Feldstein faced a choice: Become a doctor -- or an economist. He had finished his bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard College and been accepted to Harvard Medical School. He went with economics, enticed by a Fulbright scholarship to study at Oxford University in England. Once there, he found a way to combine his two areas of interest, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October special issue on the 50 Most Influential people in global finance. The first paper he published was an economic analysis of Britain’s National Health Service.

The event was a June 8 American Bankers Association conference on international economics in Atlanta, and the keynote speaker was Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke. During a question-and-answer period, Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., waited patiently while several other bank executives threw polite queries at the central bank head, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October special issue on the 50 Most Influential people in global finance.

A week after becoming the only woman in history to take charge at the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde notched another milestone: she nominated Zhu Min, a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, as a deputy. Zhu is the first Chinese deputy managing director since the fund’s founding in 1945.

Mukesh Ambani doesn’t do small. He is the richest man in India. His company, Reliance Industries Ltd., operates the largest oil refinery complex ever built from scratch.

Bridgewater Associates LP founder Ray Dalio can rattle off the investing fads he’s witnessed since he began trading as a 12-year-old golf caddie: the Nifty-50 stock craze of the 1970s, the 1980 gold bubble and even the 60- 40 stock-to-bond mix.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. partner Dinakar Singh discovered in 2001 that his 19-month-old daughter, Arya, had a crippling genetic disease called spinal muscular atrophy.

During five years in the French Foreign Legion, Glencore International Plc Chairman Simon Murray was sent on missions ranging from death defying to merely gruesome.

Mutual-fund manager Frederick “Fritz” Reynolds lives in Maui, Hawaii, and Las Vegas. The Maui home was his choice. He decided to buy in Vegas earlier this year partly because he couldn’t pass up the gleaming one-bedroom apartment overlooking the Strip that was being offered at a 75 percent discount from the price it would have sold for four years earlier, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October issue.

One of the best moments of Tony Hayward’s 28-year career with oil giant BP Plc came before dawn on Christmas 1982.

At the height of his power in a country he has transformed, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is positioned for the first time as an anchor of stability and economic growth both in Europe and the Middle East.

The interrogation of Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar followed a pattern.

Economic miracles sometimes need course corrections, even in Singapore, which last year was home to more U.S. dollar-millionaire households per capita than any other country, according to Boston Consulting Group Inc.

Perry Vieth baled hay on a neighbor’s farm in Wisconsin for two summers during high school in 1972 and 1973. The grueling labor left him with no doubt about getting a college degree so that he’d never have to work as hard again for a paycheck. Thirty-eight years later, and after a career as a securities lawyer and fixed-income trader, Vieth is back on the farm.