The Nice Hunt

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."

His luck, perhaps, but not his views. H.L. ignored Dallas civic projects. Ray is investing $210 million in the Reunion redevelopment project, not far from the city's least loved landmark, the Texas School Book Depository. The project includes a 30-story Hyatt Regency Hotel to be opened next summer, a 50-story tower with revolving restaurant now half complete, and an office building to be started later. In 1973 Ray also put up $400,000 to launch a Dallas city magazine, D. Its first issue featured an article severely criticizing his father for doing nothing to boost Dallas.

Personally, Ray says he aims to keep his family life "average--despite the peculiar spelling of my last name." He lives in an unpretentious upper-middle-class house in North Dallas with his wife Nancy, who was a classmate at Southern Methodist University, and their four children, and drives a five-year-old Buick. Friends describe him as earnest and rather dull at parties. Politically, Hunt calls himself moderate, and by family standards he is. He has supported conservative candidates, but talks of the need for business and government to work together, a view that would have been anathema to his father.

At the office, Ray keeps his door open to almost any employee who wants to see him--though he always has a stack of phone messages on his desk to riffle through if the conversation drags. Some of his colleagues are concerned that he may even be a bit too polite and deferential. Says one Dallas businessman: "He's the last one out of the elevator and the last one walking down the hall. But I'm not sure he can twist arms or kick butts like he'll have to in order to run a good business." Be that as it may, it is surprising for a Hunt to be suspected of being too nice a guy.

Bunker and Herbert Hunt last week joined the pioneers of a new tactic in company takeovers. In March, Great Western United Corp., which the Hunts control, bid $15.75 a share for 35% of Sunshine Mining Co., a major silver producer, but Sunshine management never advised its stockholders whether to accept or reject the offer. So Great Western now has lowered its bid to $14.75.

Traditionally, of course, the maker of a tender offer raises the price if his first attempt is balked. But two weeks ago, Anderson, Clayton & Co., a big food processor, became the first to try the opposite tack: it lowered its offer for Gerber Products Co., the baby-food maker, to $37 a share from an initial $40. The aim apparently was to prompt shareholders of the target company to bring pressure on management to accept the original offer. Two lawsuits have already been filed on behalf of Gerber stockholders, seeking damages from Gerber management for resisting the $40 bid.

*A fourth son of H.L.'s first marriage has mental problems that keep him in seclusion.

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