Book Reviews: Hess - The Last Oil Baron
There are very few family business stories as exciting, interesting, or unpredictable as Hess Oil and its founding father. First-generation Leon was born into an immigrant family on the east coast of the United States. He learnt his trade during the Second World War, as a member of the Army's Logistics Corp. Upon his return he built an empire on a single second-hand delivery truck. During the next half century, he turned his small company into a multinational, multi-billion dollar oil empire, which today includes wells, storage tanks, refineries, a trading house, and fuel stations. But the story really heats up upon Hess Oil's merger with Delaware-based oil company Amerada, which gave Hess a seat on the NYSE, and the modern-day battle between his son John and activist investors over the company's strategy. Every great family business has stories over the transition between generation one and two and this story is still very much ongoing.
Hess - The Last Oil Baron By Tina Davis, Jessica Resnick-Ault
Rated 4/5
Published by Wiley
Pages 288
