T. Boone Pickens: Financier and Corporate Raider
Business Owner · Energy, Oil & Gas
T. Boone Pickens was the best-known corporate raider of the 1980s and chaired BP Capital Management. He gave away more than $1 billion before his death in 2019.
About T. Boone Pickens: Financier and Corporate Raider
Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. (May 22, 1928 to September 11, 2019) was an American business magnate and financier who chaired the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980s and, later in life, a prominent conservative activist and philanthropist. When he died in 2019 his net worth stood at $500 million, after he had given away more than $1 billion to philanthropic causes. Pickens was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma, the son of Grace Marcaline Molonson and Thomas Boone Sibley Pickens, an oil and mineral landman. During World War II his mother ran the local Office of Price Administration, rationing gasoline and other goods in three counties. His great-great-grandfather was Ezekiel Pickens, Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina. At 12 he delivered newspapers, quickly expanding his route from 28 papers to 156, which he later cited as an early introduction to "expanding quickly by acquisition", a practice he favored throughout his career. When the Oklahoma oil boom ended in the late 1930s his family moved to Amarillo, Texas. Pickens attended Texas A&M on a basketball scholarship but was cut from the team, lost the scholarship and transferred to Oklahoma A&M, now Oklahoma State University. Sources: English Wikipedia (T. Boone Pickens, accessed September 2026).
Basic Information
Chairman, BP Capital Management; corporate raider and philanthropist (1928-2019)
Company Details
BP Capital Management
Energy, Hedge Funds, Oil and Gas
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