Thomas Pickens (May 22, 1928, Holdenville, Oklahoma) is an American business magnate and financier with a net worth of $500 million (2016).

T.Boone Pickens chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He remained a closely followed Oracle of the energy markets. He was a well-known corporate raider which made him a celebrity during the 1980s.

At age 12, Pickens delivered newspapers. He quickly expanded his paper route from 28 papers to 156. Pickens later cited his boyhood job as an early introduction to “expanding quickly by acquisition”.

Thomas Pickens graduated in geology from Oklahoma State University in 1951. He is a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity.

In 1954 T.Boone Pickens was employed by Phillips Petroleum. In 1956, following his period as a wildcatter, he founded the company that would later become Mesa Petroleum .

But it was Pickens’ corporate acquisitions during the 1980s that made his fame and fortune.

Some of the most publicized deals during the period included the attempted buyouts of Cities Service, Gulf Oil, Phillips Petroleum, and Unocal.
Time magazine put Pickens on the cover for the March 1985 issue.

Three years later Thomas Pickens briefly considered running for president in the 1988 elections.

However, Pickens would not pursue a career in politics and instead, in 1997, Pickens founded BP Capital Management (then called BP Energy Fund)– the initials standing for “Boone Pickens” and not related to British Petroleum. He holds a 46% interest in the company which runs two hedge funds, Capital Commodity and Capital Equity, both of which invest primarily in traditional energy companies such as oil, natural gas, and nuclear power corporations like Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Shaw Group.

In 2009 T.Boone Pickens received the 2009 Bower Award for Business Leadership for 50 years of visionary leadership in oil and other types of energy production.

Paradoxically, the hugely successful energy magnet was also an environmentalist.

The Washington Post says that “perhaps the strangest role” Pickens “has fashioned for himself is his current one: the billionaire speculator as energy wise man, an oil-and-gas magnate as champion of wind power, and a lifetime Republican who has become a fellow traveler among environmentally minded Democrats – even though he helped finance the ‘Swift boat’ ads that savaged” Sen. John F. Kerry’s presidential campaign.

In an editorial, The New York Times reported T.Boone Pickens “has decided that drilling for more oil is not the whole answer to the nation’s energy problems.”

Thomas Pickens also lobbied for the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act (HR 503) which would prohibit the slaughter for human consumption and the trade and transport of horse flesh and live horses intended for human consumption.

At age 12, Pickens delivered newspapers. He quickly expanded his paper route from 28 papers to 156. Pickens later cited his boyhood job as an early introduction to “expanding quickly by acquisition

INVESTMENT STYLE

T.Boone Pickens invests in target companies. He is also a value investor weighted towards energy equities and commodities.

Chief executives, who themselves own few shares of their companies, have no more feeling for the average stockholder than they do for baboons in Africa – T.Boone Pickens

LEARNING RESOURCES

In his 2008 book, The First Billion is the Hardest, T.Boone Pickens noted a belief in the “peak oil” theory.

Thomas Pickens also wrote Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America’s Energy Future.

The First Billion is the Hardest – T.Boone Pickens

CONNECT WITH INVESTOR

Follow this World Top Investor via their various social media channels and read more about their background and current investment interests on their official website:

T.Boone Pickens
hwww.boonepickens.com