The financial crisis that has gripped the nation has taken a huge toll on L.A.’s wealthiest residents with significant public stock holdings. Several have lost $1 billion or more just in the last few months.

Unlike most tough times, when the rich often escape the worst of it because of their access to the best financial advice, the recent carnage has been different.

Kirk Kerkorian, ranked as the city’s wealthiest resident earlier this year by the Business Journal, has lost $4.5 billion in the past six months. Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone lost $2.2 billion and philanthropist Eli Broad appears to have lost $1.5 billion.

And that’s just for starters.

“The higher net worth (people) can do a much more sophisticated asset allocation, (but) everybody’s being hit very hard,” said Bob Graziano, a managing partner in wealth management firm Northern Trust Corp.’s Westwood office.

With such a broad decline in the markets, it can be hard even for the wealthiest to protect their assets. They took a similar hit during the tech bust, when the Dow Jones industrial average declined 34 percent and the Nasdaq much more. The Business Journal calculated in 2003 that the cumulative wealth of L.A.’s 50 Wealthiest Angelenos had fallen 9 percent.

Kerkorian, the 91-year-old chief executive of Tracinda Corp., has been particularly exposed to the recent market swings, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

He owns nearly 150 million shares of casino operator MGM Mirage, the value of which has been cut in half since April. His 140 million shares of Ford Motor Co. have lost more than 40 percent. Kerkorian’s net worth now stands at $6.1 billion, down 42 percent since May, the last time the Business Journal calculated his wealth for the annual Wealthiest Angelenos issue.

Redstone has seen the value of his shares in Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. drop about 40 percent since May, which has dropped his net worth to $4.8 billion.

Broad, one of the city’s leading philanthropists, has been hard hit by the struggles of American International Group Inc., which the government bailed out with an $85 billion equity investment last month.

Broad made the bulk of his fortune when he sold his financial company, SunAmerica, for $18 billion to AIG in 1999. Broad’s holdings in the insurance giant were worth $1.7 billion in April, when the shares were trading above $39. Now with those shares trading around $4, his stake has shrunk to around $100 million assuming he hasn’t sold the stock. Broad’s wealth is now estimated at $5.3 billion.

Those kinds of losses have the city’s philanthropic community biting its fingernails. Broad alone has donated hundreds of millions of dollars in the last few years to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, UCLA and other institutions.