T boone pickens carl icahn biography

The death of oil man T. Boone Pickens at 91 underscores how far the once ungentlemanly quest to shake up corporate America has come.

Along with Carl Icahn, Pickens’ hallmark was his crusade to upend entrenched company management by launching takeover bids and calling for better treatment of investors.

Today, this endeavor is known as shareholder activism.

And 2018 was a banner year for it, with 935 activist targets worldwide, according to Value Walk. While the start of 2019 was a little slower, the energy remains undeniable. The originators were Pickens and Icahn, whose separate fights were billed as efforts to wrest control from sleepy company bureaucrats.

Pickens was known for threatening to acquire larger oil firms in the 1980s with his own Mesa Petroleum as his financial vehicle.

T boone pickens carl icahn biography

He mounted a hostile bid for Phillips Petroleum in 1984, which failed. The next year, Icahn, now 83, was more successful in his effort to acquire Trans World Airlines.