Boone Pickens: The Luckiest Guy in the World - Softcover

Boone Pickens

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1587980193 ISBN 13: 9781587980190

Publisher: Beard Books Inc, 2000

Synopsis

"Business and finance leader, corporate investor, and champion of shareholders' rights."

About this title

From the Publisher:

This is the autobiography of a man who turned a $2500 investment into America's largest independent oil company, Mesa Petroleum, in just thirty years. It is truly an American success story, tracing how Boone Pickens got from a little town in eastern Oklahoma to the towering buildings of Wall Street in exciting, unlikely, and sometimes painful stages. In 1983, to save Mesa Petroleum from impending disaster, he entered into a risky game, identifying undervalued, mismanaged companies, such as Gulf, Phillips, and Unocal, and making huge investments in them. His plan was to try to force the management to do something for their stockholders, including himself, and if they refused, he would try to take them over. His countless gambles paid off, adding a number of companies to his corral.

About the Author:

Thomas Boone Pickens was born on May 22, 1928 in Holdenville, Oklahoma. He then moved on to Amarillo and attended Texas A&M in 1951. After working as a roughneck and in a refinery, he became a geologist for Phillips Petroleum, which he left in 1954.

He founded Mesa Petroleum in 1956, when he founded Petroleum Exploration with Eugene McCartt and John O'Brien. In three years, PEI had attracted a group of Amarillo investors and in 1958, discovered eight gas and one oil well in sixteen tries. In 1959, Pickens formed Altair Oil and Gas Company which explored oil in Canada, serving both as president and major stockholder.

The next years saw continuous growth, with the formation of Standard Gilsonite in 1960, and remarkable increase in both employees and investors. PEI eventually evolved to become Mesa Petroleum (after a friendly merger with Pioneer, a large Amarillo independent oil and gas company), also known as Mesa Limited Partnership, the nation's largest independent producer of domestic oil and gas and one of its largest gas producers.

Pickens also succeeded in oil futures, but it was his repeated attempts to take over companies much larger than his own that led to his and the company's greatest fame. By the 1980s he came to believe that acquiring other companies had become more profitable than oil exploration and production. His skill lay in an ability to identify undervalued companies and make a profit when outside parties and the markets recognized their value.

Mr. Pickens is a respected spokesman for business and industry. He has earned a national reputation for his innovative thinking and executive management.

About this edition

• Publisher: Beard Books Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1587980193
• ISBN 13: 9781587980190
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 388