H.L. 's son streamlines dad's empire—and hits oil, too
Like father, like son—usually, perhaps, but not in the Hunt family. The late Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, who parlayed a winning poker hand into a pyramid of oil wells, was eccentric even for a self-made billionaire. Before he died in November 1974, Hunt became a legend for his backing of ultra-right-wing causes, his penny-pinching (he often carried his lunch in a brown paper bag) and his health faddism (he used to crawl around his Dallas mansion on all fours for exercise). The youngest of his five sons, Ray Hunt, 34, is quiet almost to the point of being self-effacing. Yet surprisingly, Ray has wound up running—and streamlining —about half of the empire that H.L. once commanded.
The surprises began a month after H.L. Hunt's death at age 85. When his will was opened, Ray turned out to be executor with full administrative powers over the estate—possibly because H.L. had doted on Ray as the only son of his second marriage. Discord soon developed between Ray and his three older halfbrothers, Bunker, Herbert and Lamar.* If not eccentrics in H.L.'s mold, they are at least wheeler-dealers. Bunker, in particular, has grabbed headlines with gaudy speculations in silver and soybeans. To resolve the conflict, Ray agreed in mid-1975 to split the empire in two. Bunker, Herbert and Lamar took over management of a new company, Hunt Energy Corp.; Ray retained control of the flagship operation, Hunt Oil Co.
H.L. left a hodgepodge of 200-odd entities (companies, trusts, royalty ownerships) that in his last days were slipping, partly because the old man would let no one else make decisions—and made increasingly few himself. Though figures are hard to come by, because the Hunt companies are privately owned, the Hunt family fortune was once estimated at $2 billion. The best estimate of the net worth of Ray's half of the empire today is "in excess of $300 million."
Ray quickly corralled a herd of talented young executives from other Dallas-based corporations and moved them into key management slots. After a year-long study of company operations, he reorganized his holdings into three profit centers: real estate (a downtown redevelopment project in Dallas and 2,000 acres of industrial parkland near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport); agriculture (400,000 acres of ranch land in Montana, Texas and Wyoming); and oil, the heart of the empire.
Like H.L., Ray intends to concentrate on exploration. As he explained to TIME Correspondent George Taber, "We have a unique niche to fill. We're big enough to look for oil anywhere, but small enough to act fast. We don't have to go through five layers of executives to find a vice president on vacation in the Bahamas to get a decision." One example: when a partner in a North Sea drilling operation off Scotland last year decided to sell out, Hunt Oil purchased his 15% interest. "In the space of one week we bought in and were drilling," boasts Ray. The drills promptly struck a major pool estimated to contain as much as 500 million bbl. Says one crusty Texas oilman: "Dammit, he's got his father's luck."