Homestead Steel Works, Detroit Publishing Co. Library of Congress, public domain
Harvard Business Review Press
The Outsiders
Eight CEOs who allocated capital like owners.
$35.00
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- Author
- William N. Thorndike Jr.
- Publisher
- Harvard Business Review Press
- Published
- January 2012
- Pages
- 0
- Format
- Hardcover
- Size
- Standard
- Language
- English
The Library Essay
Capital Allocation Was the Whole Job
William Thorndike set out to study chief executives by the only measure that compounds, long-run return per share, and found that the best records belonged not to celebrated managers but to a quiet collection of iconoclasts, Henry Singleton of Teledyne, Tom Murphy of Capital Cities, Katharine Graham of the Washington Post and five others. What they shared was a habit of treating capital allocation, buybacks, acquisitions, dividends and the refusal of all three, as the chief executive's real work, delegating operations and ignoring Wall Street's calendar.
Published by Harvard Business Review Press in 2012, the book was commended in a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter and adopted by investors as a checklist for judging managements. Its heroes were contrarians by arithmetic rather than temperament, which is the book's quiet lesson.
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