Distant Force

Roberts worked alongside Henry Singleton for years and then ran Teledyne after him, so this is an insider writing about the company rather than an analyst writing about the record.

The record is the reason anybody looks for this book. Across the seventies and eighties Singleton bought back something in the region of ninety percent of Teledyne's shares, which is a number that still does not look real when you write it down.

What the book shows you that the record does not is that he had no policy. He issued stock when the stock was expensive and he bought it back when it was cheap, and he would not commit to a consistent programme in either direction, because a consistent programme means buying at prices you would not otherwise pay.

That is the part almost every company gets wrong. A buyback authorisation announced in advance, executed steadily regardless of price, is a commitment to ignore the only variable that matters.

It is a memoir and it reads like one, which means it is warmer about everybody than an outsider would be, and you should read it knowing that.