“[Warren Buffett] considers that Henry Singleton of Teledyne has the best operating and capital deployment record in American business.” – John Train’s The Money Masters
“He understood how to move between real assets and financial assets in a way you don’t see today…He was the most brilliant industrialist that I’ve ever met, and I’ve met many”– Leon G. Cooperman speaking about Henry Singleton
Dr. Henry E. Singleton (1916-1999) was a business genius. He’s the founder of Teledyne, at the time one of the US’s largest conglomerates. Created in 1960, Teledyne was formed to capitalize on the coming revolution in which digital technology would replace analog devices and systems in everything we could touch and imagine. Loosely translated, Teledyne means Power Through Communication.
Henry Singleton was the idea behind the outstanding book The Outsiders by William N. Thorndike. Singleton is a master capital allocator and absolutely crushed the market. He could read a book a day and play chess blindfolded. He kept a low key profile and rarely gave interviews. This explains in part why most people aren’t familiar with him. Little is known today of Singleton’s achievements as a capital deployer and there’s a lot to learn.
Here’s the 6 pages Forbes article.
Henry Singleton Forbes 1979 article
Something to listen to in the car:
