How Pipeline King Richard Kinder Made $1 Billion Today

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Richard KinderCompany photo via Bloomberg News
America’s largest pipeline company is eating itself. Well, sort of.

Kinder Morgan, which operates some 80,000 miles of oil and gas pipelines through a network of separate entities strung together by its billionaire chairman and chief executive, Richard Kinder, is consolidating under one corporate roof. In a deal valued at $71 billion, the parent company will fully acquire three companies it already has partial stakes in: Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, Kinder Morgan Management, and El Paso Pipeline Partners. Think of it as fusing a disparate collection of pieces into one, functioning whole—kind of like building a pipeline.