Henry Singleton

American engineer and entrepreneur who built Teledyne into a major conglomerate through acquisition — and then executed one of the greatest capital allocation programs in history by repurchasing 90% of Teledyne's shares over 8 years, returning enormous value to shareholders.

Demonstrated the power of countercyclical capital allocation — buying back stock aggressively when it was cheap (when other CEOs were issuing shares to make acquisitions) and making acquisitions when other CEOs were buying back stock — making Teledyne's per-share value grow dramatically while its total share count shrank by 90%.