Business Notes Takeovers

Since October the hungriest shark in the corporate sea has been swimming gradually smaller circles around California's Unocal, the 14th largest U.S. oil company (1984 sales: $11.5 billion). Corporate Raider T. Boone Pickens started buying into the company's stock, insisting at first that he intended to make only a modest investment. Pickens confirmed last week that his appetite has grown. The Mesa Petroleum chairman announced that his investor group, which now holds 13.6% of Unocal, is seriously considering an effort to gain control of the company. Pickens' group last week asked Unocal to postpone its annual shareholders meeting, scheduled for April 29, by two months so the | Texas oilman could assemble his own slate of directors to run against the current board. Unocal curtly refused.

The company could be the toughest quarry to date for Pickens and his partners, who have made assaults on Gulf, Cities Service and Phillips that yielded before-tax profits of about $880 million. Unocal has girded for the assault with a battery of secret antitakeover defenses. Unocal's tough-as- tacks chairman, Fred Hartley, vows he will fight rather than buy off Pickens with greenmail. Stay tuned.