"In what other MBA program can you learn from proven success?" - Toffee McAlister '05
T. Boone Pickens
If you were an entrenched corporate bureaucrat in the 1980s, the words "Boone Pickens is on the phone" struck terror in your heart - it meant your days of freely spending shareholder profits on company planes and executive perks were about to end. Boone Pickens's courage in attacking powerful executives to defend the rights of small shareholders makes him a powerful role model for future Acton Scholars.
Pickens started as an entrepreneur at age fourteen with a paper route in his hometown of Holdenville, Oklahoma. After graduating from Oklahoma State University with a degree in geology, Pickens worked as a geologist before starting Mesa Petroleum in 1964. By 1982, Mesa was one of the largest independent oil companies in America with assets of over $2 billion.
In 1982, Pickens became fed up with executives who lived lavish lifestyles with little regard for their shareholders: "CEO's who own few company shares have no more feeling for the average shareholders than they do for baboons in Africa." He began a series of takeover attempts to wrest power from corporate bureaucrats at companies like Cities Service, Gulf Oil and Unocal.
In less than three years Pickens created over $13 billion in profits for millions of small shareholders. In the process, he ignited a shareholder's revolution that forever changed the balance of power in corporate America.
Pickens stepped down from Mesa at age 69, not knowing that his most profitable years as an entrepreneur still lay ahead. Pickens started his commodity investment firm BP Capital in 1997 with $37 million; by 2005 the firm created over $4 billion in profits for his investors, his employees and himself.
The bias towards action in the Acton classroom mirrors Pickens' advice for entrepreneurs: "Be willing to make decisions. That's the most important quality in a good leader. Don't fall victim to what I call the ready-aim-aim-aim-aim syndrome. You must be willing to fire."
Pickens also has the charitable habits of an ideal Acton Scholar, with recent gifts of $10 million to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California and $5 million for hurricane relief efforts. Pickens's pledge of $70 million to Oklahoma State University makes him the largest donor in the school's history.
Lord Acton's most famous quote is: "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely." Boone Pickens's courage to expose the hubris of powerful corporate executives makes him a powerful role model for future Acton Scholars.
