{"id":332710,"date":"2026-06-11T21:14:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T21:14:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/332710\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T21:14:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T21:14:27","slug":"dallas-business-titan-and-former-exxonmobil-ceo-lee-raymond-dies-at-87","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/332710\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas business titan and former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond dies at 87"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lee Raymond<\/a>, former chairman and CEO ExxonMobil<\/a> Corp., the world\u2019s largest investor-owned oil company, died June 6 at a Dallas hospital from complications of pneumonia, according to his son Colin Raymond.<\/p>\n

The retired executive was 87.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Raymond was pivotal in putting D-FW at the forefront of the world\u2019s energy stage\u00a0\u2014 personally orchestrating Exxon\u2019s corporate headquarters relocation from Manhattan to Las Colinas <\/a>in 1989. The move was monumental for the region, signaling that North Texas was a global energy contender.<\/p>\n

But Raymond\u2019s legacy is one of both significance and controversy.<\/p>\n

During the 1990s. Raymond served on the Dallas Morning News Board of Energy Experts, a standing panel of the region\u2019s most powerful oil and gas industry influencers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not one to mince words, he once abruptly threatened to leave an energy panel meeting using expletive language because a question was posed to him as a \u201cbig oil executive.\u201d Another top executive gently put his hand on Raymond\u2019s shoulder and persuaded him to stay.<\/p>\n

During those meetings, he also showed a softer side, expressing loyalty to his employees. He quietly and intensely listened to his peers and other industry experts, absorbing what they had to say.<\/p>\n

His office suite was known as the \u201cGod Pod\u201d, and some employees nicknamed him \u201cIron Ass,\u201d according to\u00a0Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, a 2012 book by the journalist Steve Coll.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for far-reaching influence, Raymond was also the mastermind behind Exxon\u2019s merger with Mobil that created ExxonMobil Corp., considered one of the largest and most successful industrial mergers in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

Raymond retired in Dallas in 2005.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He was succeeded as ExxonMobil CEO by Rex Tillerson<\/a>, who adopted more inclusive policies and acknowledged that climate change wasn\u2019t fake science. Tillerson briefly served as United States Secretary of State from 2017 to 2018 in the first administration of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

In mid-2023, ExxonMobil moved its corporate headquarters and top executives from Las Colinas to its sprawling campus in Spring, Texas, north of downtown Houston.<\/p>\n

Raymond is survived by Charlene Hocevar, his wife of 65 years; Colin and his two triplet brothers, Rob and John Raymond, and seven grandchildren.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lee Raymond, former chairman and CEO ExxonMobil Corp., the world\u2019s largest investor-owned oil company, died June 6 at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332711,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,104699,95372],"class_list":["post-332710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-news-obituaries","tag-tp-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}