Losing A Petroleum Fortune: How Al Hill III Let XTO Get The Hunt Family Jewels
It’s been said that one entrepreneurial-minded person founds a business on passion and drive, the second generation builds the business, the third generation works there because their family expects them to do so, and the fourth generation doesn’t know anything about the business and sells the “stock” their daddy and granddaddy owned.
In the case of the Hunt family fortune, the first great grandchild to legendary oilman H.L. Hunt—Albert Hill III—sued the caretakers of the fortune and found himself disinherited.
It’s a shame, because he could have been the annointed one had he positioned himself and not felt so entitled.
In Sydney Sheldon’s novel “Master of the Game,” a diamond empire is created through risk and malice and the daughter of the founder spends her entire life trying to groom an heir apparent with no success and great heartache. Such is the case with the Hunts.
Once considered the world’s richest man, Hunt Petroleum founder H.L. Hunt started by taking poker winnings some 80 years ago and betting them on an oil well. Since his death in 1974, his nephew Tom Hunt, now in his 80s, has run Hunt Petroleum and is the keeper of the family trusts that control the flow of wealth to the heirs.
First great grandson Al Hill III, now in his late 30s, could have been the prince-in-waiting had he played his cards right. Instead, he partied too hard in his trust-fund-supported youth and later became the family whistle-blower over perceived injustices and conflicts of interest within the family hierarchy. He is trying to have his uncle Tom removed as chairman and trustee.
Tom, once H.L.’s right-hand-man, whether innocent or guilty of such accusations, likely saw no heirs-in-waiting capable of captaining the family ship, and decided to sell the assets to Fort Worth neighbor XTO Energy and disperse the funds. Hunt heirs will get to participate in the upside by retaining 23 million shares of XTO as part of the deal.
Al III, unfortunately for him, lawsuited himself out of his piece of the fortune through his disinheritance.
Imagine what an MBA and BS in Petro Engineering might have gotten Al III. King in waiting for the family fortune. If you’ve got complaints about how the ship is being steered, it’s much more effective to be captain than pirate. He could have apprenticed his way to the top all these years and then had the control to correct any of the injustices he is now suing over.
Here’s my advice to Al III: Drop the lawsuit and the attitude and humbly ask forgiveness of the family. While it’s too late to save the heirloom assets (XTO Energy is going to get them regardless of the lawsuit), that action will save your piece of the proceeds and the monthly trust dividends. Then do what great granddad H.L. did—take your stake and bet it on a play (Haynesville, Muskwa, Marcellus, maybe even the Pierre sound like good odds). A new Hunt legacy could be yours to create.
Steve Toon, Editor, A&D Watch; Contributing Editor, Oil and Gas Investor; www.OilandGasInvestor.com; stoon@hartenergy.com
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July 2nd, 2008 at 8:38 am
Steve, You “hit the nail on the head” with this article. Al 111 will come groveling soon enough. What else can he do with no marketable skills?
July 29th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Re the Hunt/Hill family legal proceeding, I have some thoughts after reading media articles and documents on the Internet.
Without question, the only people with nothing to lose are lawyer Bill Brewer and Al 3’s wife, Erin, who along with her friend, attorney Brewer, convinced her once noble husband to sue his own father, his sisters, his aunts and his longtime paternal advisors. You get the picture. The lawyer gets the big fees and gets his hands on some of the Hunt family money and the wife gets a lucrative divorce settlement someday when she negotiates her profitable departing pay off. The losers are the rest of the family who have enduring having their private lives defamed and dragged through the mud by a lawyer obsessed with publicity.
Bill Brewer apparently lives for publicity, has his own controlled public relations firm, and strives to attach himself to people the press will write about. This puts his victims/defendants as well as his clients, in the media, even though they probably do not want to be there. Brewer purports to be wealthy from a successful legal career. However, his cars and his NY house are rented and his home in Dallas is owned by the law firm. His three ex-wives have certainly not experienced him being generous. Erin Hill wears the mask of being community minded, however, the truth apparently is that she is more interested in what she can be provided in jewelry, luxury travel, expensive clothing, and accessories, etc. — whether is comes from Al 3’s father’s money or through an extortive series of ill-founded legal allegations.
Al 3 is said to carry the bible in his telephone (in several languages) but he has obviously forgotten to read the part about “Honor thy father”. His flaunted Christian beliefs were, apparently, no longer important to him as he charged family members, including his two younger sisters with racketeering. Al 3, by the grace of God and a quirk of fate, was born positioned to carry forward with important family responsibilities but allowed himself to get sold on a scheme for a quick and large cash-out for which he had to sacrifice his love of family and his integrity.
So how might this end? Maybe Al 3 has no money to pay for his beauty queen wife’s bills and for his family vacations in Palm Beach and France, and his father no longer funds his follies, his homes and cars, his “admired citizen charitable contributions”, and then Al 3 loses the lawsuites filed by his attorney who has not been to the courthouse in years?
The big question is: if the case gets to the courtroom, how did Tom Hunt and his supposed co-consipirators harm the value of the Trusts when they are receiving $4.2 billion in the sale of Hunt Petroleum? Informed sources have indicated that the value of the company increased six times in the past eight years, during which time money was supposedly “wasted” on items like sports tickets, etc.
At this point in the saga it becomes obvious that Al 3 needs a different lawyer, one who would not be disqualified for playing legal games and for over nine months kept Al 3 form communicating with anyone. Al 3 needs a lawyer who will tell him the truth about his fate so that he might still save himself. But Al 3 does not see what is happening. He has already lost his personal dignity. Will his wife be next? Will Erin, humiliated by the notoriety and generally negative public opinion, flee to Palm Beach where wealthy widowers and divorcees tend to congregate? Will Bill Brewer try to slip on to his next wealthy client/victim while flashing his press clippings?
The winners and losers are predicatable, the family will go on to being a family and loving and respecting each other, and Al 3 will have a long, hot summer for many years to come.
Let me know what you think.
Mary Lampe