Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr.

Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr. who was born May on 22, 1928 is also known as T. Boone Pickens. He is an Texan financier who chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a famous takeover operator and corporate raider in the 1980s. His current net worth of about $3 billion, and he was ranked by Forbes as the 117th-richest person in America and the 369th in the world.

T. Boone Pickens, Jr. was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma. Boone’s father worked as an oil and mineral landman (rights leaser). During World War II, his mother managed the local Office of Price Administration, rationing gasoline and other goods in four counties.

At age 12, T. Boone Pickens worked delivering newspapers. He quickly expanded his newspaper clientele from 28 papers to 156. Pickens later cited his newspaper job as an early introduction to “expanding quickly by acquisition,” a business practice he employed later in life.

When the oil boom in Oklahoma finished in the late 1930s, Pickens’ family moved to lice in Amarillo, Texas. T. Boone Pickens, Jr. did not served in the military but instead attended Texas A&M on a basketball scholarship. He lost the scholarship and transferred to Oklahoma A&M which is now Oklahoma State University, where he majored in Geology. He was in the Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. In 1951, he graduated from Oklahoma A&M with a degree in geology. After his graduation, Pickens was worked for Phillips Petroleum until 1954. In 1956, following his period as a wildcatter, he established the company that would later become Mesa Petroleum.

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