Chapter 9

Brian Bradshaw, David Meaney, Michael Ross, and Alex Szewczyk

A Place at the Table

CONFIDENCE AND CONVICTION. Those are the most important lessons the four thirty-somethings who work for Boone Pickens's $4 billion BP Capital have learned from the seventy-nine-year-old oil tycoon turned takeover artist turned hedge fund billionaire. “He doesn't get rattled by the day-to-day price movements,” says David Meaney, thirty-one, who joined the Dallas-based hedge fund in 2005 and is one of the firm's two traders. Pickens spends his time assessing and reassessing the situation to ensure he's right, says Meaney, but “he has an uncanny ability to see through the noise.”

Turning down the volume means staying focused, and equities analyst Alex Szewczyk, ...

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