Pickens, T. Boone, Jr.

Pickens, T. (Thomas) Boone, Jr.

(1928– ) oil company executive, financier; born in Holdenville, Okla. Son of an oil company lawyer who claimed a distant kinship to frontiersman Daniel Boone, he worked as a well-site geologist before establishing his own drilling enterprise, Mesa Petroleum Co., in 1964. From this base he became a feared corporate raider, practicing what his critics called "greenmail"—buying large blocks of a corporation's stock, threatening to take over that company, then selling them back for enormous profits. Even his failures, such as his aborted bids in the 1980s to seize Gulf and Unocal, earned him vast sums. Away from the boardroom, he became a noted crusader against drugs.