Beneath this avuncular, outgoing exterior, however, lurked a razor-sharp business mind. Murphy was a highly disciplined buyer who had strict return requirements and did not stretch for acquisitions—once missing a very large newspaper transaction involving three Texas properties over a $5 million difference in price. Like others in this book, he relied on simple but powerful rules in evaluating transactions. For Murphy, that benchmark was a double-digit after-tax return over ten years without leverage. As a result of this pricing discipline, he never prevailed in an auction, although he
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