when did gulf oil go out of business
1980
Gulf Oil
By 1980, Gulf exhibited many of the characteristics of a giant corporation that had lost its way. It had a huge but poorly performing asset portfolio, associated with a depressed share price. The stock market value of Gulf started to drop below the break-up value of its assets. Such a situation was bound to attract the interest of corporate raiders, although a corporation in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 was in the early 1980s thought immune to takeover risk.
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Gulf Oil [SEP] Demise
By 1980, Gulf exhibited many of the characteristics of a giant corporation that had lost its way. It had a huge but poorly performing asset portfolio, associated with a depressed share price. The stock market value of Gulf started to drop below the break-up value of its assets. Such a situation was bound to attract the interest of corporate raiders, although a corporation in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 was in the early 1980s thought immune to takeover risk. Its undoing as an independent company began in 1982 when T. Boone Pickens, an Amarillo, Texas, oilman and corporate raider (or greenmailer), and owner of Mesa Petroleum, made an offer for the comparatively larger (but still considered "non-major" oil company) Cities Service Company (more generally known by the name Citgo) from Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was then trading in the low 20s.