About T. Boone Pickens
Thomas Boone Pickens Jr. was an American business magnate and financier. Pickens chaired the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator and corporate raider during the 1980s. Later in life, he was a prominent conservative activist and philanthropist. At the time of Pickens' death in 2019, his net worth stood at $500 million, after he had given away more than $1 billion to various philanthropic causes. Pickens led Mesa's first major acquisition, a takeover of the Hugoton Production Company, which was 30 times the size of Mesa. In 1997, Pickens founded BP Capital Management (then called BP Energy Fund) – the initials standing for "Boone Pickens" and not related to BP. In his 2008 book, The First Billion Is the Hardest, Pickens noted a belief in the peak oil theory. In 1956, following his period as a wildcatter, he founded the company that would later become Mesa Petroleum.
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