Singleton

CM: "We respect Henry Singleton for a very simple reason: He was a genius. Henry Singleton never took an aptitude test where he didn’t score an 800 and leave early. He was a major mathematical genius. Even when he was an old man, he could play chess blindfolded, at just below the Grand Master level. He had an awesome intellect, well into the top 1/1,000 of one percent. This was an extreme analytic. Of course, he did create a conglomerate because it was legally allowed at the time. He did it the way everybody else was doing it, he did it better, and he made a lot of money. When they ran out of favor, the stock went way down, he bought it all back for less than it was worth.

Of course, he died a very wealthy man. He was a totally rational human being in things like finance. What I found interesting about Henry Singleton, which has interesting educational implications, is that in watching both Henry and Warren invest and operate at the same time, we had two great windows of opportunity to examine human nature. Henry was very rational. He was quite similar to Berkshire in some ways. Henry never issued a stock option. He had certain commonalities with Warren that were just logical outcomes. What was interesting to me was how much smarter Warren was at investing money than Henry. Henry was born a lot smarter, but Warren had thought about investments a lot longer. Warren just ran rings around Henry as an investor even though Henry was a genius, and Warren was a mere almost-genius.”

WB: " Henry Singleton of Teledyne has the best operating and capital deployment record in American business.”

CM: about Singleton: “mile higher than anyone else …utterly ridiculous.”

“He was 100% rational, and there are very few CEOs that we can say that about.”

Arthur Rock once said about Singleton: ”He really didn’t care what other people thought.” Independence of thought and emotional self-control are the keys to making successful contrarian bets.

WB about Singleton: "he bought only a few things he understood well”