The Pickens Profile You Haven't Read

An exerpt posted in this week's Newsweek : http://www.newsweek.com/id/151727/page/2

Pickens likes to portray his years as a corporate buccaneer during the 1980s as "shareholder activism." When Mesa fell into a cash crisis in the mid '90s after the price of natural gas collapsed, there was no mercy for him on Wall Street. Pickens called in Texas financier Richard Rainwater, and his wife and business partner, Darla Moore, to help raise capital. (Rainwater helped another oilman, George W. Bush, escape his money problems by making him co-owner of the Texas Rangers, a deal that eventually made Bush a multimillionaire.)


Moore, a leveraged-buyout specialist dubbed "the Toughest Babe in the Business" by Fortune, tried to raise $1 billion on Wall Street for Mesa. "I found out there wasn't a bank in the country that would touch the deal if Boone was CEO," Moore told NEWSWEEK. "I tried to soften the message [but] he was really surprised. 'But I get along with all those guys,' is what he said." The Rainwaters worked out a deal for Pickens to retire as CEO, and bought him out, a deal that still rankles the billionaire. Moore whooped with surprise when told by a NEWSWEEK reporter that Pickens had compared her in his book to a "wolverine that pisses on everything it doesn't eat." Moore responds, "I think what people don't know about Boone is that deep down he is actually—I hate to say this—a nice man. And he knows more about energy than anybody in the world."

Just a little insight to Darla Moore;
Darla Moore In 1981, at Chemical Bank in New York, Moore and Conway were focused on a new idea: loaning money to corporations teetering on the brink of bankruptcy,
Soon after, she met and married Rainwater, who made her president of his investment company. They now had $500 million to put wherever they wanted.That's when she pushed T. Boone Pickens out . . . and then to a hard look at Rick Scott.

Scott was Rainwater's good friend. They had bought two hospitals in Texas and shared a vision: a nationwide chain of hospitals using cost controls.

By 1997, Scott's company, Columbia/HCA, was the nation's largest managed care provider.

But Moore said Scott was unwise to ignore subordinates who questioned his practices and foolish to dismiss a federal investigation of how Columbia billed Medicare.


According to the SEC Form :
Med Diversified Inc.
Annual Meeting Of Stockholders
September 9, 2003


JAMES K. HAPP has served as chief executive officer of our subsidiary, Tender Loving Care Health Care Services, Inc., since October 2002.

Previously, Mr. Happ served for three years as executive vice president of NCFE, during which time he restructured the servicer department to improve operational performance and accelerated the utilization of technology to increase operational efficiency. (1999-2002 by deduction of SEC statement)

Mr. Happ also served as chief financial officer of the Dallas-based Columbia Homecare Group, Inc., a home care company with more than 500 locations nationwide and more than $1 billion in revenue in 1997. In this role, he directed the company through the challenging reimbursement climate, known as the interim payment system, and participated in the divestiture of all of Columbia/HCA's home care operations (At least1997 until 1999)

Participated in the "DIVESTITURE"...Where did this divestiture 'divest' to?
Look at SEC form 10-K for HCA Inc./TN Filing Date: 4-1-1996.