Boone Pickens Dies (Pittsburgh, Wall: neighborhoods, live in, law)

[Wells5]

This post is a little late but T. Boone Pickens, the Texas corporate raider, died Sept 12. Why post this in the Pittsburgh forum?- because Pickens caused a great Pittsburgh company, Gulf Oil, to be sold to Chevron Corp in 1984, which shut down Gulf's headquarters and closed its very large Harmarville research facility. Thousands of high paying jobs left the area.


The same thing happened to Westinghouse, which hired a man named Michael Jordan, an executive with Pepsi Cola, to reorganize the company. He sold off all of the industrial business and turned Westinghouse into CBS. Nothing of the giant Westinghouse remains in Pittsburgh.


Another Pittsburgh company, H.H. Robertson, which made "curtain Wall" systems for modern office buildings, also fell victim to a corporate raider named Samuel Belzberg.

[gg]

Yeah that had a negative effect on some and a positive one for others. I remember it well. He was a character for sure.

[prnlvsxy]

Originally Posted by Wells5

This post is a little late but T. Boone Pickens, the Texas corporate raider, died Sept 12. Why post this in the Pittsburgh forum?- because Pickens caused a great Pittsburgh company, Gulf Oil, to be sold to Chevron Corp in 1984, which shut down Gulf's headquarters and closed its very large Harmarville research facility. Thousands of high paying jobs left the area.


The same thing happened to Westinghouse, which hired a man named Michael Jordan, an executive with Pepsi Cola, to reorganize the company. He sold off all of the industrial business and turned Westinghouse into CBS. Nothing of the giant Westinghouse remains in Pittsburgh.


Another Pittsburgh company, H.H. Robertson, which made "curtain Wall" systems for modern office buildings, also fell victim to a corporate raider named Samuel Belzberg.

I had a pair of his shoes...

[villageidiot1]

Originally Posted by Wells5

This post is a little late but T. Boone Pickens, the Texas corporate raider, died Sept 12. Why post this in the Pittsburgh forum?- because Pickens caused a great Pittsburgh company, Gulf Oil, to be sold to Chevron Corp in 1984, which shut down Gulf's headquarters and closed its very large Harmarville research facility. Thousands of high paying jobs left the area.

The same thing happened to Westinghouse, which hired a man named Michael Jordan, an executive with Pepsi Cola, to reorganize the company. He sold off all of the industrial business and turned Westinghouse into CBS. Nothing of the giant Westinghouse remains in Pittsburgh.

Another Pittsburgh company, H.H. Robertson, which made "curtain Wall" systems for modern office buildings, also fell victim to a corporate raider named Samuel Belzberg.

Thanks for the history lesson. I remember those days well. I dealt with Westinghouse in the early to mid 80s and they were a huge corporation both in Pittsburgh and around the country. There was nothing positive about these corporate raiders. Many lives were disrupted for no benefit except to people like Pickens and his investors.

[szug-bot]

Rumor has it that....

at one time, Pittsburgh was actually #3 in large corporate (Fortune 500, if that existed back then?) headquarters, only behind NYC and Chicago.

That includes the once mighty Gulf.....

Think about that. That was so long ago, but might have been true up to the early 70s.

What kind of amazing place would we live in if that were all retained? Westinghouse would have maybe been challenged to develop amazing people moving systems. We might have already used the river for hydro power (I thought that recently it was being studied as a possibility).

And jobs, traffic, chaos, fun, people everywhere, the area awash in money....and maybe some neighborhoods in the City would be kept up and not be dumpy and/or partially empty.

[Herodotus]

What made it worse is that Pickens did this during the collapse of Steel in the early 80s. It couldn't have come at a worse time for Pittsburgh.

[svband76]

Originally Posted by villageidiot1

Thanks for the history lesson. I remember those days well. I dealt with Westinghouse in the early to mid 80s and they were a huge corporation both in Pittsburgh and around the country.

A lot of corporate law firms made a ton of money from doing work for Westinghouse back then. The heady days.