Pickens Brings Anti-Japan Push to County

Corporate raider T. Boone Pickens inaugurated the Orange County chapter of his “shareholders rights” organization Monday with a vigorous attack on Japan.

Pickens, chairman of the Texas energy company Mesa Limited Partnerships and a longtime critic of corporate management practices, called for a ban on Japanese acquisitions of U.S. companies, even though he conceded that such a move would not be in the interest of shareholders in the short run.

He accused Japanese firms of operating “cartels” that systematically exclude U.S. companies from Japan and artificially prop up Tokyo’s domestic financial markets.

He also referred in ominous terms to Japanese “encroachment” with direct investments in the United States and said the time had come to “shut it down.”

Although Pickens maintained that he favors free trade, he said U.S. policy-makers should tell the Japanese: “We’re all through doing business with you until you let us in” to the Japanese market.

Pickens, who has been trying to win a seat on the board of a Japanese firm in which he owns a 26% stake, acknowledged that Japanese buyouts are often a good deal for U.S. shareholders.

But he also said in his talk at the Four Seasons Hotel that in the long term, shareholders would be better off if the United States implemented harsh retaliatory trade measures against Japan.

The United Shareholders Assn., a lobbying group founded by Pickens in 1986, aims to represent the interest of stockholders against what Pickens and others regard as the abusive practices of entrenched corporate managers.

The group has fought federal and state legislation aimed at blocking hostile takeovers and has attacked corporate anti-takeover measures such as so-called “poison pills.”

The county chapter of the group, headed by Randy Young of the Santa Ana investment banking firm Everhart Corp., is the 35th local chapter and hopes to speak on behalf of about 600,000 county shareholders.

The group is lobbying for a cut in capital gains taxes and has sought to publicize its cause with a “hit list” of 50 U.S. companies the group holds to be the worst at protecting shareholder interests.

Fluor Corp. of Irvine is among those on the Target 50 list. A Shareholders Assn. member is pushing the firm to adopt a secret ballot for the election of directors.