Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr. (born May 22, 1928 in Holdenville, Oklahoma), known as T. Boone Pickens, is the tenth and current United States Secretary of Energy. Before that, he was an American financier who chaired the hedge fund BP Capital Management. He was a well-known takeover operator during the 1980s. His takeovers put many independent oil producers out of business. With an estimated current net worth of about $3 billion, he was ranked by Forbes as the 117th-richest person in America and ranked 369th in the world.