Henry l doherty biography of nancy

Inhe created the Cities Service Company, a utility holding company that later became the Citgo Petroleum Corporation. He was of Irish descent. Doherty was first hired by the Columbus Gas Company at the age of He reportedly wrote years later, "I could not get along in school Inhe started Henry L. Inhe founded his own holding company, Cities Service, which held the stock of energy companies he had bought previously.

Cities Service bought the holdings of Theodore N. In he formed his own firm, Henry L. Five years later he brought three operating companies under a holding company which he called Cities Service.

Henry l doherty biography of nancy: At various times in

Cities Service expanded rapidly - fifty-three operating companies were acquired in the single year Many of them had been in difficulties through the inability of local managements to keep pace with the unprecedented tempo of technological and economic change. Thus there were many opportunities for the superb technicians of the Doherty organization to apply the Doherty formula: "acquire, rebuild, merge, re-finance, infuse new life and new organization, and move on to the next field.

Manufactured gas led them to natural gas, and drilling for natural gas, to oil. Always there were the opportunities to pioneer - to do something at least a little better than it had been done before. The first long-distance large-diameter high-pressure gas pipeline, from Amarillo, Texas, to Chicago, was finished by Doherty in He was among the first users of underground storage to meet the seasonal peaks in the use of gas.

The wasteful practice of drilling so-called "off-set wells" in oil fields, to draw off the oil as rapidly as possible before a competitor could tap the same deposit or "pool" from adjoining land, shocked Doherty, and for several years he fought almost single-handedly within the petroleum industry for rational conservation measures, notably legislation requiring unit operation of oil pools.

All this expansion required capital faster than it could be supplied from earnings, especially by regulated utilities, and faster than orthodox bankers would provide it for so unorthodox an engineer. Increasingly he relied on selling his own stocks and debentures through a network of branch offices of Henry L. This frenzied finance, in which he persisted despite warnings from financially saner leaders of the utility industry, was neither uncommon nor illegal at the time.

When in he paid over a million dollars personally into Cities Service to settle a stockholders' suit over some transactions, it was without admission of wrongdoing. But some of the practices in which he had engaged were subsequently declared out of bounds by the Securities Act of and the Public Utility Holding Company Act of The "death sentence" clause, which fell harshly on Cities Service and added immeasurably to the problems of Doherty's successors, would hardly have been included in the Holding Company Act except for the shocking tactics used by Cities Service and one other holding company in lobbying against it.

Besides his vast utilities holdings he invested heavily in real estate during the 's, particularly Wall Street office buildings and Florida resort hotels. Doherty died on December 26,of bronchial pneumonia in Temple University Hospital, Philadelphia, in which he had resided as a semiinvalid for three years. Doherty had few peers in breadth and depth of understanding of the complex technologies of his age.

Business career [ edit ].

Henry l doherty biography of nancy: Henry then married Nancy

Personal life [ edit ]. See also [ edit ]. Notes [ edit ]. American International Group bought the building in to serve as its headquarters. References [ edit ]. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN Retrieved March 26, Encyclopedia Britannica.

Henry l doherty biography of nancy: Father: John Murdoch Doherty.

December 26, The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture. Retrieved July 27, Lamont—Doherty Earth Observatory. Retrieved August 24, June 21, Hartford Courant. December 29,