Jack Welch died. Welch helped destroy General Electric and American industry.
I wrote about Jack Welch in Goliath. He was a monopolist and exported American productive capacity to China. “If I had my way, I’d put every GE plant on a barge," he said. simonandschuster.com/books/Goliath/…
In 1981, Jack Welch. He announced GE’s strategy would be to stop competing in markets where the company wasn’t number one or two. Sell everything else. That set the pattern for corporate America.
Within four years, Welch shut down a dozen of the company’s 217 factories, and cut 18 percent of total employment at the company. He became known as "neutron Jack" for destroying the workers but leaving the buildings standing.
Under Jack Welch, General Electric began a policy of firing 10 percent of its employees every year. This was celebrated in corporate America. simonandschuster.com/books/Goliath/…
By the 2000s, the company founded by Thomas Edison didn’t even manufacture light bulbs, sourcing them from Chinese contractors and branding them as GE products. Welch's disciples also took over and ruined other illustrious corporations, like Boeing.
In 2000, GE owned NBC, lots of rumors Welch put his thumb on the scale to throw the election to George W. Bush by calling Florida for Bush.
Importantly, Welch was *a leader.* He pushed the Reagan revolution along. Many CEOs just follow the trend but Welch saw the change in antitrust law in the Reagan era, and pushed it along aggressively. That's why he's beloved in the business world. He structured their world.
During the financial crisis, he told the FT that "shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.” It turns out GE, pushed into finance by Welch, is probably riddled with accounting fraud. That's his legacy. A true leader, but in the wrong direction. ft.com/content/293fc3…
