Richard Rainwater

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Richard E. Rainwater (born 1943) is an American investor and billionaire fund manager. With an estimated current net worth of around $3.5 billion, he is ranked by Forbes as the 91st richest person in the United States.

Rainwater is a financial dealmaker from Fort Worth, Texas. The son of a wholesale grocer, he graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in mathematics and earned his MBA from Stanford Business School.

He landed a job as an investment banker, but soon accepted an invitation from former Stanford classmate Sid Bass to manage and diversify his family portfolio. Rainwater became the chief financial architect for the Bass family investments. He was given $5 million to invest during his first year and managed to lose it all, then sought an investment strategy and applied his scientific mind to his quest.[citation needed] According to an early 1980's article, which a drawing of Rainwater was on the cover (Wall Street's Best Kept Secret"), after that debacle, Rainwater sought advice on more qualitative investing and things took off. Rainwater eventually transformed the Bass family fortune into $5 Billion.

Rainwater has been an independent investor since 1986 when he launched his own business, investing in more than 30 companies and purchasing fifteen million square feet of office space in Texas.

He founded or co-founded firms including ENSCO International Incorporated, an oil field service and offshore drilling company in 1986; Columbia Hospital Corporation in 1988; Mid Ocean Limited, a provider of casualty re-insurance in 1992; and Crescent Real Estate Equities, Inc., in 1994. He has been called a "capitalist cowboy for the '90s, leading the way into new frontiers of finance".

Rainwater is married to Darla Moore.

[edit] Betting on peak oil

Beginning in the late 1990's, when petroleum prices were near historic inflation-adjusted lows, Rainwater began taking long positions on petroleum futures. He was influenced by reading Beyond the Limits, the sequel to Limits to Growth.[1] Over the following years, he read further about peak oil, including books such as The Long Emergency by James Kunstler, and online discussions.[1] Rainwater took positions in financial markets that effectively amounted to betting with peakniks and malthusians against cornucopians, somewhat like a reprise of the famous Simon-Ehrlich wager, except on a much larger scale. The oil price increases since 2003 have made these bets pay off handsomely for Rainwater.[1]

While remaining guardedly optimistic against the worst-case scenario predictions of doomers, Rainwater sees the peak oil phenomenon as a grave threat, and seeks to call attention to it.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d Ryan, Oliver (2005-12-26). The Rainwater Prophecy. Fortune (magazine). Retrieved on 2008-04-01, 2008.

[edit] External links

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