The Huntsman’s influence also has been felt beyond Utah’s borders. In the 1970s, Huntsman Sr. served as special assistant and staff secretary to President Richard Nixon and later briefly ran for governor of Utah.
Jon Jr., a presidential candidate in 2012, worked in five White House administrations, including stints as ambassador to Singapore, China and Russia. The 59-year-old father of seven served as governor of Utah from 2005 to 2009, and recently announced he was running again next year. Paul, a father of eight, bought the Salt Lake Tribune in 2016. A recent Internal Revenue Service ruling that allows the struggling newspaper to become a non-profit means it cannot endorse political candidates.
The family made several earlier attempts at diversification. In 2007, Huntsman Sr. tried to do so in one fell swoop by selling the family firm to Hexion, a chemical company backed by Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management Inc. He formed a private equity firm, Huntsman Gay Global Capital, with Paul and a partner to invest the proceeds.
Hexion and Apollo then tried to back out of the deal, resulting in a court battle that ultimately led to a settlement of $1 billion for Huntsman Corp. from various parties. The private equity firm went ahead, but the Huntsmans largely bowed out in 2014.
“We didn’t want to be constantly fund-raising and we’re contrarian in a way that institutional investors tend not to be comfortable with,” Paul said.
In 2017, Huntsman Corp. and Switzerland-based chemical company Clariant AG agreed to merge, but opposition from activist investors scuttled the deal.
Still, the Huntsmans successfully negotiated many deals over the decades, building a network of contacts around the globe. “A lot of opportunities come our way,” Paul said, referring to the family office.
HFI’s first big deal -- the acquisition of American Pacific Corp. in 2015 -- was brought to it by a bank, Wu said. The Cedar City, Utah-based company is the sole producer of ammonium perchlorate, the primary oxidizing agent in solid propellant rockets, booster motors and missiles used for space exploration, commercial satellite launches and national defense, according to its website.
“We looked at it as a specialty chemical business, but it ended up being more of an aerospace and defense business,” Paul said in an interview this month at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. philanthropy forum in New York.
The family office’s second major investment, GTA TeleGuam, arrived through different channels. “It came through a close friend we’d been working with on other transactions, out of Hong Kong,” Huntsman said.