John Roberts

"Further Reading Auletta, Ken. The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1997. Auletta, Ken. Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way. New York: Random House, 1991. Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996. Biggs, Barton. Hedge hogging. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2006. The Buffett Partnership. Collection of Reports to Investors, 1958–1969. Byrne, John A. The Whiz Kids: The Founding Fathers of American Business and the Legacy They Left Us. New York: Currency/Doubleday, 1993. Conant, Jennet. Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Cunningham, Lawrence. The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 1997. Drucker, Peter F. Adventures of a Bystander. New York: Harper and Row, 1978. Ellis, Charles D., ed. (with James R. Vertin). Classics: An Investor’s Anthology. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin, 1989. Gladwell, Malcom. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2008. Gleick, James. The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Vintage Books, 2011. Graham, Katharine. Personal History. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1997. Hagstrom, R.G. The Warren Buffett Portfolio. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1999. Halberstam, David. The Best and the Brightest. New York: Random House, 1972. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011. Kaufman, Peter D. Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger. Los Angeles: PCA Publications, 2005. Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Lawrence, Mary Wells. A Big Life (in Advertising). New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Lowe, Janet. Damn Right! Behind the Scenes with Berkshire Hathaway Billionaire Charlie Munger. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000. Lowenstein, Roger. Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist. New York: Random House, 1995. Mauboussin, Michael. More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. Poundstone, William. Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street. New York: Hill and Wang, 2005. Press, Eyal. Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012. Preston, Richard. American Steel. New York: Avon Books, 1992. Pruitt, Bettye H. The Making of Harcourt General: A History of Growth Through Diversification 1922–1992. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1994. Roberts, John. The Modern Firm: Organizational Design for Performance and Growth. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Robichaux, Mark. Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2002. Skildelsky, Robert. John Maynard Keynes, Volume 2: The Economist as Savior, 1920–1937. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. Swensen, David F. Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment. New York: Free Press, 2005. Tedlow, Richard S. Giants of Enterprise: Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built. New York: Harper Business, 2001. Train, John. The Money Masters. New York: Harper and Row, 1980. Index Note: Page numbers followed by f refer to figures; page numbers followed by t refer to tables."

"Complementing these executives and staff was a truly distinctive breed of AIG executive, epitomized by John Roberts, called the “mobile overseas personnel” or MOP. This group did service stints in numerous countries during their career, as many as 10 to 15, taking two-to-three year terms in each place. It was almost like the foreign service of the United States. They were corporate ambassadors who became legends within AIG. An experienced MOP could walk into any AIG office in the world, from Taiwan to Santiago, and know just about everyone. Having traveled widely, he could troubleshoot the thorniest problem successfully anywhere in the world, whether obtaining the release of colleagues captured by hostile governments or negotiating with customers perceived to have fabricated claims. The personality type could vary, from the diplomatic to the irascible, the elegant to the brusque. But they tended all to be wise, urbane, and multilingual—cowboys, pioneers, Indians, a cadre of colorful actors that made the company tick."