Distant Force: A Memoir of the Teledyne Corporation and the Man Who Created It
Summary
This is the full-title entry for George Roberts' privately published memoir of Teledyne Corporation and its founder Henry Singleton, the same work catalogued elsewhere in this reference under the shorter title.
Roberts was president of Teledyne and writes from inside the company. The book covers Singleton's founding of Teledyne in 1960, the conglomerate assembly of roughly one hundred and thirty businesses through the 1960s using highly valued Teledyne shares as acquisition currency, the abrupt halt to acquisitions when the share multiple fell, the decentralised operating structure with a very small head office, and the share repurchase programme that retired roughly ninety percent of outstanding shares between 1972 and 1984.
Singleton was a mathematician who had worked on inertial guidance systems before founding the company, and Roberts describes a chief executive who spent very little time on operations and almost all of it on capital allocation, which is the reverse of the normal division and is the reason investors study the record.
The reference has not verified the specific figures and episodes in this account, which is a privately published memoir written by a participant decades after the events. Roberts describes what happened rather than analysing why it worked. The Teledyne chapter in William Thorndike's The Outsiders provides the quantified analysis of the same record and is the better starting point for an investor.
Key takeaways 7
- Singleton spent most of his attention on capital allocation and very little on operations, which reverses the normal chief executive division of time.
- Teledyne used its own highly rated shares as acquisition currency and stopped acquiring entirely once the multiple no longer supported it.
- The share repurchase programme retired roughly ninety percent of outstanding shares over twelve years at prices management judged below value.
- The company operated as a decentralised group with a very small corporate staff and no pursuit of operating synergies between businesses.
- Insurance float from the group's insurance subsidiaries funded a concentrated equity portfolio managed at the corporate level.
- A conglomerate can create value when the corporate centre allocates capital well and does nothing else, which is the opposite of the usual conglomerate defence.
- The reference has not verified the specific figures in this privately published participant memoir.
Who should read it
Investors studying capital allocation who want the insider Teledyne account, with Thorndike's The Outsiders as the analytical treatment.
Where it sits in the reference 2
Who recommended it 1 · 1 direct
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