Harold Hamm is an oil executive who has a personal net worth of $11.3 billion. That net worth makes Harold Hamm the richest person in Oklahoma and the 30th richest person in The United States. Hamm is a member of the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, one of Time Magazines' 100 Most Influential People in the World for 2012 and was Mitt Romney's official energy advisor during his failed Presidential campaign. Unfortunately Harold is about to add a new, less admirable, accolade to his resume. Later this year, Harold Hamm will take ownership of the record for the most expensive divorce of all time.
Harold Hamm Divorce
Harold Hamm was born on December 11, 1945 in Lexington, Oklahoma to a dirt poor family of cotton sharecroppers. He was the youngest of 13 children. After graduating from high school, college was financially out of the question so Harold got a minimum wage job at a gas station in Enid Oklahoma. Hamm saved every penny he earned and at the age of 22 he founded the Shelly Dean Oil Company (named after his two eldest daughters). Harold saw very little success in his first seven years in the oil business. Finally, in 1974 he drilled a claim that would eventually go on to produce 75 barrels per day.
Shelly Dean Oil's lucky streak would continue for the next several decades most notably with large discoveries in North Dakota and Montana. In the 1990s, after the company's name was officially changed to Continental Resources, Harold Hamm had his biggest oil discovery of all time: The Bakken field of North Dakota. The Bakken field would turn out to be largest untapped source of oil in America since the 1960s and today produces more than 700,000 barrels per day. That represents 10% of all daily American oil production. The Bakken filed is expected to produce a total of 24 billion barrels of oil which makes it one of the 15 largest oil discoveries in history. By comparison, the largest oil discovery ever, Saudi Arabia's Ghawar Field, produces 5 million barrels a day and is expected to produce as many as 83 billion barrels in its lifetime.
Bakken Oil Field
Thanks largely to the Bakken field discovery, Continental has grown into one of largest and most powerful petroleum producers in America. Today, Continental Resources is the fourth largest publicly traded company in Oklahoma with over 500 employees, $2.4 billion in annual revenue and a market cap of $16 billion! Throughout this rapid growth, Harold Hamm managed to maintain a 70% controlling stake of the company, which as of March 2013 is worth $11.22 billion!
In April 1988, fresh off divorcing his first wife and just before the Bakken discovery, Harold met and married a rising young executive at his own company named Sue Ann. The future Sue Ann Hamm would eventually rise to be one of the top executives at Continental. Sue Ann organized large scale oil-industry trade groups and even testified to Congress on behalf of Continental before she left to raise the couple's two young children Jane and Hilary. Unfortunately the happy marriage began to unravel in 2010 when Sue Ann allegedly caught Harold with another woman. Over the next two years, the couple became more estranged until Sue Ann finally filed for divorce in May 2012.
Under Oklahoma law, all assets and wealth that were acquired during the marriage would be split in half. Harold would likely be required to give Sue Ann half of his 126.3 million shares of Continental Resources, roughly 63.15 million shares. At today's closing price, those shares would be worth a whopping $5.367 billion. $5.3 billion would easily set the record for most expensive divorce of all time, nearly tripling the $1.7 billion settlement Rupert Murdoch paid to his first wife Anna in 1999. Interestingly, if Harold Hamm were to hand over 63 million shares of Continental to Sue Ann, his equity stake would be reduced from 70% to 35% which means he would no longer be the majority owner. Losing majority ownership could open the company up to hostile takeovers and could even result in Harold being ousted from the company he founded. With that in mind, it's likely that Harold will find a way to pay Sue Ann a multi-billion dollar cash settlement in order to maintain control. Either way it will be very interesting to see how this all unfolds!
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Most Expensive Divorces
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