Boone Pickens is an American business magnate and financier. He chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management.

Pickens was born in Holdenville, Oklahoma.  At the age 12, Pickens delivered newspapers and quickly expanded his paper route from 28 papers to 156. Pickens later found his boyhood job as an early introduction to "expanding quickly by acquisition", a business practice that favored him later in life.

 Pickens' corporate acquisitions made him a celebrity during the "deal-making" 1980s. And his most publicized deals included attempted buyouts of Cities Service, Gulf Oil, Phillips Petroleum, and Unocal.

Pickens' most recent recognition comes from The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia where he received the 2009 Bower Award for Business Leadership for 50 years of visionary leadership in oil and other types of energy production.