The late Kerry Packer was, for many years, unrivalled in his status as Australia's richest man but the family wealth is not flourishing so well under his heir, James.

The plight of James Packer is a reminder that while Australia's wealth management market has been buoyed, at least until recently, by the booming commodity market, some high net worth individuals in the country have had problems.

In the last 12 months, the younger Mr Packer has lost his title as “ Australia’s richest man” to iron ore magnate Andrew Forrest, and according to some estimates, has seen his wealth halved to around A$3 billion.

One pundit, the long-time Packer watcher Paul Barry ­ author of the biography “The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer” estimated at the weekend that James Packer had been losing wealth “at the rate of A$6,000 a minute, A$420,000 an hour, or A$10 million a day”.

The decline has come as Mr Packer has exited the media businesses built up over two generations by his father and grandfather and plunged into the casino business both at home and internationally, notably in Las Vegas and Macau.

While he and his shareholders pocketed A$4.5 billion last October when he sold the bulk of the Packer media empire to a private equity group, James Packer then invested heavily in the casino business, which is suffering heavily in the economic downturn.

The result is that his new flagship listed company, Crown Limited, has lost two-thirds of its value this year, and recently had to write down its investments in several Las Vegas gaming operators by A$181 million.

The unfortunate thing for Mr Packer about his foray into casinos is that he bought in at the top of the market, and he has significant commitments still in the pipeline.

In Las Vegas, there is the A$2.5 billion in cash he has committed to Cannery Casinos, while the massive A$3 billion City of Dreams project in Macau is still under construction.

Kerry Packer was a famous gambler who loved to take on the house, and most people saw it as a sure bet when his son decided to cross the divide, and own the house himself.

But with markets teetering and gamblers staying away in droves, that may have been a bad call and endangered what has ­ for three generations ­been Australia's largest family fortune.