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Vice & Versa. None of the new Texans have ranged wider than John and Clint Murchison (pronounced Murr-kiss-son). While they were still in their twenties, the brothers were given a Texas-sized chunk of their father's immense interests. Buying, selling, borrowing and investing all across the U.S., the brothers have doubled their original stake (to an estimated $150 million), now have interests in at least 100 companies, including one of the nation's biggest residential builders, insurance firms, banks, hotels, country clubs, a major publishing house and oil and gas companies. Even without Alleghany, they owned or directed enterprises worth more than $1 billion. With Alleghany and all its subdivisions, says John, things have got so complicated that "we may find out we're suing ourselves if we're not careful."
The brothers are a formidable team. "We've got vice and versa," old Clint once said of them. "One of my boys won't make up his mind at all. The other makes it up too fast." If that were ever true, it is no longer so. Lean, hawk-faced John Murchison is quiet and reflective, quick to charm friend and foe with his affable reasonableness. Before making up his mind, he likes to walk around a proposition and look over and under it—but acts with steely decision once he has set his course. Clint Jr., brush-haired and fierce-eyed behind his glasses, is the more aggressive of the pair, often intimidates people with his acerbic wit and brusqueness. ("You have all the characteristics of a dog but loyalty," he once informed an old business foe.) Quicker to shoot from the hip in a business deal, Clint often snaps, "I'll take it," where John would have drawled, "I'll think it over."
Lethal Combination. In typical Texas fashion, the brothers have no written partnership agreement, work out of unmarked and Spartan offices in a two-story building in downtown Dallas. They spend about a third of their time on the road, searching out new deals and consolidating old ones. While John is running down a lead in Colorado, Clint Jr. is back in Dallas, restlessly pacing the corridors and barking into the telephone. Though each specializes in certain areas of business (John in finance, insurance and publishing; Clint Jr. in real estate and construction), they consult each other about every big deal and keep in constant touch by telephone, sometimes using an electronic scrambler to discourage wiretapping. This makes them a lethal combination: not only can each brother work on the deal from a different angle, but each can avoid or postpone entanglements by stressing the absent brother's disapproval.