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 The Dallas Morning News reported that Hunt died at an
assisted-living center in Dallas suffering from dementia and cancer.
Hunt's sister-in-law, Nancy Hunt, confirmed the death on Tuesday
night.
Hunt, born in El Dorado, Arkansas, on Feb. 22, 1926, was one of
seven children in the "first family" of H.L. Hunt, one of the
pioneers of the first Texas oil boom, who also had relationships
with two women who gave him eight other children.
At his peak, Hunt owned cattle, hundreds of race horses, ranches,
real estate, sugar companies, banks, valuable art and the Shakey's
pizza restaurant chain, in addition to the family's vast oil
holdings. He had a reputation for buying many of those assets based
on a hunch, rather than research.
Bunker, a college dropout and Navy veteran, moved to the forefront
of the Hunt family's Dallas-based empire, usually working in concert
with brother Herbert, who shared his losses in the silver market
slide in 1980. Herbert was considered the detail man while Bunker
was the visionary who had his father's knack for fashioning a deal.
Bunker also inherited his father's far-right political views, seeing
government regulations as onerous stumbling blocks in the way of
capitalism, and was a national figure in the John Birch Society.
Biographers said Hunt's silver strategy was fueled by the fear of an
imminent economic apocalypse brought on by communists and U.S.
liberal establishment.
Hunt was nothing like the stereotype of a swaggering, hard-living
Texas oilman in a cowboy hat - just a portly, nondescript
bespectacled man in an inexpensive rumpled suit. He didn't smoke or
drink, and while he spent big on investments and passions such as
horses and ancient coins, Hunt did not drive fancy cars, never flew
first class and was known to take the subway when in New York while
working on multi-million dollar deals.
When asked about his total wealth at a congressional hearing after
the silver market collapse, Hunt said: "I don't have the figures in
my head. People who know how much they're worth aren't usually worth
that much."
Another time, as his financial empire was collapsing, Hunt sighed
and said, "A billion dollars isn't what it used to be."
PLAYING HUNCHES
His father had gotten rich in Texas but Hunt went abroad to make his
mark in the oil business in the 1950s. He found little or no success
in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia but then tried Libya, where he scored
big.
Hunt eventually controlled 8 million acres in a field there
estimated to have been three times the size of the East Texas field
that gave birth to the Texas oil boom. He was said to be worth
between $8 billion and $16 billion, and was considered to be the
richest man in the world.
Then Muammar Gaddafi came along. He overthrew Libya's king in 1969,
and by 1973 had nationalized Hunt Oil Co's Libyan operations.
After the losses in Libya, Bunker wanted something safe,
particularly as he feared a worldwide financial collapse. His
solution was silver.
Bunker and Herbert, along with brother Lamar, had slowly started
buying up silver in 1970, when it was $1.94 an ounce. After the
Libya fiasco, they kept buying quietly, often through family members
or family companies, and by 1974, had rights to 55 million ounces.
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Hunt was disappointed that the price of silver was not rising fast
enough and his frustration was compounded when commodities
exchanges, fearful that the brothers were out to corner the market,
imposed limits on buying it.
Hunt eventually solved both problems by working with Saudi buyers to
get the price soaring in late 1979, topping out at $50 an ounce in
January 1980. Hunt said later that he and his partners had
controlled 200 million ounces of silver – but it was a holding so
vast that they could not sell off for fear of driving down the price
themselves.
The Hunts' downfall came on March 27, 1980, later known as Silver
Thursday. With the price falling, the brothers faced a margin call
that they could not meet and that threatened them with a loss of
more than $1 billion.
Silver Thursday brought havoc to various markets, and there was
concern that the Hunts' fall also would bring down the banks that
had been financing them. But a bank bailout, with the Hunt-owned
Placid Oil Co as collateral, propped them back up.
LITANY OF PROBLEMS
The silver debacle was just the start of a rash of trouble for the
Hunts. Oil prices were falling and their real estate and sugar
businesses were hurting badly. Lawsuits, bankruptcy proceedings,
massive loan payments, tax bills and regulatory fines also ate away
at the Hunt brothers' fortune, which reportedly dwindled from $8
billion in 1980 to $1 billion in 1988.
Bunker and Herbert eventually were charged with manipulating the
price of silver futures, and in 1989 were fined $10 million each and
barred from commodity trading.
Asked about Silver Thursday 29 years later, Hunt answered with an
understatement when he told the Dallas Morning News: "It was
unfortunate. Let's put it that way."
Hunt also faced a personal bankruptcy that required him to liquidate
assets - a process that took seven years but by no means left him
destitute. He and Herbert continued in the oil and real estate
business.
In 1975, Bunker and Herbert were acquitted of federal wire-tapping
charges after they had put private detectives on the trails of Hunt
employees they suspected of embezzlement. Their defense was based on
the claim that they did not know wire-tapping was illegal.
Hunt and his wife, Caroline, with whom he had four children, lived
their later years in a relatively modest house in Dallas.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Steve
Gorman and Ryan Woo)
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