Word: bushed
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Bush went back into oil. He started hiring for his own company, Arbusto (Spanish for bush), raising money from a network of East Coast backers who were close to his father and uncle, money manager Jonathan Bush. Among them were drugstore tycoon Lewis Lehrman, who lost a bid for Governor of New York in 1982; venture capitalist William H. Draper III, who would become president of the U.S. Export-Import Bank during the Reagan Administration; and Celanese CEO John Macomber, who later landed the same post...
...connections got him in the door, talent sealed the deal. "The politician was in him," says Jim McAninch, who ran Bush's drilling operations in the early days. "He was a great promoter and a great money raiser." He also had, as a former colleague puts it, "a photogenic memory"--a malapropism that captures his gift for the social side of life, his Clintonian ability to remember names of countless people he has met only briefly...
...Arbusto, Bush developed the same management style he uses today, a flat structure with easy access to the boss who guides but doesn't sweat the details. "He hires good men, and lets 'em do their job," says McAninch. "He had a lot of oil-field savvy even though he didn't have a technical background." In its first five years, Arbusto drilled 95 wells, hitting oil or gas about 50% of the time, an average performance. "George used to say, 'Man, we need a company maker,'" recalls Dickey, who discovered some vast oil fields in later years, working...
...Bush stumbled by trying to go public with a drilling fund just as oil prices dipped. That year he also sold 10% of his company to a Panamanian company run by Philip Uzielli, a longtime friend of Vice President Bush's top adviser James A. Baker III, who later became Secretary of State. What raised eyebrows was the price Uzielli paid: $1 million in exchange for 10% of Bush's company, whose total worth at the time was $382,000. Bush says the infusion wasn't a bailout. Arbusto, he says, "wasn't in trouble. We were in growth mode...
...Bush merged his company with Spectrum 7, an oil-drilling firm run by two supporters of his father, Bill DeWitt and Mercer Reynolds. It was a good fit. Arbusto had oil prospects; Spectrum had a network of investors. The merger doubled the size of Bush's operation, and the Spectrum people wanted to upgrade his image with fancy furniture and a company car, but Bush wouldn't hear of it. "Those were the doodah days in Midland," says O'Neill's wife Jan, "and a lot of people couldn't resist--jets, boats, cars. George didn't go for that...