Peter Barton

"It was the summer of 1986, and I had flown to New York with Peter Barton, a new young recruit at TCI who had shown promise, to explore investments in a new, fast-growing genre that was making money. A lot of money. We were there to meet Irwin Jacobs, a corporate raider from Minnesota who had founded a mail-order company that dealt in closed-out merchandise. Irwin was a shrewd, motivated businessman who had found opportunity in the detritus of companies that had failed, or needed cash, or had bought too much of one product. He had been called a corporate raider in the press, accused of greenmail by public firms, and was known as “Irwin the Liquidator” in local business circles and on Wall Street."

"As chairman of the new company, I needed someone fast on their feet as president because I was still running TCI. Peter Barton had proven himself by launching CVN, negotiating with cities over tough franchise renewals, and adding levity in the awkward moments of deal discussions. He was a helluva salesperson, too, but he was terrible with numbers. How he got through Harvard Business School I have no idea. Nonetheless, I named Peter the CEO of Liberty Media under one condition: Robert “Dob” Bennett would be vice president and principal financial officer, and he would handle all financial details. Dob and Peter are about as different as people can be. Peter had the risk tolerance to think big, then move aggressively on a target acquisition. Dob, who had been director of finance at TCI since 1987 after leaving the Bank of New York, assiduously weighed the probability of success against the downside risks. But Dob and Peter worked together like they were brothers, occasionally bickering but silently complementing each other’s strengths. Sometimes one person can do two jobs. Other times, you need two people to do one. We tried to explain to investors that the Liberty spin-off would simplify the balance sheet, giving investors more choice on which part of the TCI empire they thought held more promise—pure distribution with TCI or more content with Liberty."