Richard Kinder (born October 19, 1944) is an American businessman. He is the co-founder and executive chairman of Kinder Morgan Inc., an energy and pipeline corporation.
He began his career in the energy business as an attorney with Florida Gas Transmission, which eventually became Enron Corporation, after a series of mergers He had been friends with its founder, Kenneth Lay, in college. From 1990 to December 1996, he served as its president and COO. He resigned from Enron in 1996 to start a new pipeline company with college friend William V. Morgan. They purchased Enron Liquids Pipeline for $40 million. They also merged with KN Energy. After a number of acquisitions, the most prominent being El Paso Corporation, Kinder Morgan became the largest midstream energy company in North America.
He is the chairman of the board of trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and serves as chairman of the Kinder Foundation. He previously served as a member of the board of Baker Hughes, Transocean and Waste Management, as a national board member of the Smithsonian Institution and is a past chairman of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America. A Republican, he campaigned for Bush-Quayle in 1992, for Bush-Cheney in 2004, for John McCain in 2008, and for Kay Bailey Hutchison and Tom DeLay.
In 2014, Kinder was listed on Forbes Richest People in the US. Kinder is one of seven self-made billionaires from Houston on the list, with a net worth of $11 billion. In 2020, he was ranked No. 103 on the Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America.
Richard Kinder is the Chairman And CEO, Kinder Morgan
- Richard Kinder chairs oil and gas pipeline giant Kinder Morgan, the largest U.S. energy infrastructure firm, which owns or operates 82,000 miles of pipeline.
- Net worth: $7.6 billion
- He cofounded Kinder Morgan in 1997 after stepping down as president of energy and commodities firm Enron Corp.
- Kinder stepped down as CEO of Kinder Morgan in 2015.
- His Kinder Foundation funds education, urban green space and quality of life initiatives in Houston.
- In 2015, Kinder donated $25 million to the University of Missouri to support studies of the U.S. constitution.
