CEO of Capital Cities Communications who built one of the most successful media companies in history through disciplined capital allocation and extreme decentralization — Buffett's favorite manager.
The Capital Cities model: Murphy combined two skills — identifying undervalued media properties and operating them with minimal corporate overhead. Radical decentralization: Capital Cities gave local managers near-total autonomy, keeping corporate headquarters tiny. Capital allocation: every dollar of free cash flow was allocated to the highest-return opportunity (often buybacks). Warren Buffett called Murphy 'the best business manager I've ever met.' The ABC acquisition (1985) at $3.5B was the largest non-oil media deal in history at the time — and proved prescient.
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