Reading the news today about the passing of T. Boone Pickens, a larger than life character with the cool name to go with it, the words that described him stuck me. I read these headlines that called him a tycoon, oil magnate, corporate raider, petroleum baron and many others. These are such descriptive words, which tend to be traded interchangeably with each other. Do they all mean the same thing and what is the criteria a person needs to hit in order to earn such titles?
Tycoon has an interesting history. It is actually a westernized version of a word that originated from Japan. It is interesting how this word, originally taikun, actually changed to tycoon, when other words of Japanese origin that has made it to the English language like karaoke, haiku, manga, shiitake and many others have actually kept their close Japanese to English translations, with Tycoon the only word I can find that changes in spelling and expanded its meaning.
Taikun in Japan in the 1800's means a person who was a military leader in Japan, normally who was the Shōgun (Military Dictator of Japan) was called a Taikun. It somehow made it over to the United States when a Japanese delegation in the 1860's called Abraham Lincoln a taikun (press spelled Tycoon), and soon the press was using the word Tycoon to describe anyone who was the leader of a group, political party machine and soon moved over towards the business leaders of industry.
T. Boone earn the title of Tycoon when he entered the oil & gas business as a wildcatter and through some impressive schemes from a series of company acquisitions. Some as impressive as Gulf Oil, which at the time of acquisition, was 30X more in valuation then his own company, like a minnow eating a bass. He moved into the limelight as this Oklahoma to Texas oil man buying up all kind of stakes and position in companies, through a lot of different ways that it prompted the Security and Exchange Commission to come up with the one share = one vote rule, because of prevalence of multi-vote shares or no-vote shares that were around during the late part of the 1900's.
So, what T. Boone Pickens did was act like a military general and dictator. Going in for the slay to take over the bounty and resources of the conquered, but he did it through business savvy and vulnerabilities in corporate structures. He amassed a fortune for himself, owned stakes in just about any upstream to downstream oil & gas and even wind energy companies and did give a lot of his fortune away to universities, hospitals, foundations and charities. He was the Taikun of the era of Texas Oil and we give our due respects to T. Boone and his family. May he rest in peace.
You earn the title of Tycoon by taking over your business industry in a big way. Others who were called Tycoons, in banking, railroad, mining and etc., all employed roughly the same strategies and tactics. Full on takeover by gobbling up everyone in your wake and become the leader in the industry. If you are inspired to be one, start by acquiring your competitor and then keep acquiring or having stakes in the others till you reach majority in your industry, then you will be the Tycoon.
