Jack Welch, famed for revamping GE, dies at 84
BOSTON — Jack Welch, who transformed General Electric Co. into a highly profitable multinational conglomerate and parlayed his legendary business acumen into a retirement career as a corporate leadership guru, has died. He was 84.
His death was confirmed Monday by GE. The cause of death was renal failure, his wife Suzy told The New York Times.
Welch became one of the nation’s most well-known and highly regarded corporate leaders during his two decades as GE’s chairman and chief executive officer, from 1981 to 2001. He personified the so-called “cult of the CEO” during the late 1990s boom, when GE’s soaring stock price made it the most valuable company in the world.
A chemical engineer by training, Welch transformed the company from a maker of appliances and light bulbs into an industrial and financial services powerhouse. During his tenure, GE’s revenue grew nearly fivefold, and the firm’s market capitalization increased 30-fold.
Welch’s results-driven management approach and handson style were credited with helping GE turn a financial corner, although some of the success came at the expense of thousands of employees who lost their jobs in Welch’s relentless efforts to cut costs and rid GE of unprofitable businesses.
Business success and outspokenness brought him wide fame.
In 1999, Fortune magazine named Welch as its “Manager of the Century.”
For his first book, Jack: Straight From the Gut, Welch received a $7.1 million advance. Although released on the morning of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the book became a best-seller, and led to frequent speaking engagements where he took his candor onstage.
“From the day I joined GE to the day I was named CEO, 20 years later, my bosses cautioned me about my candor,” Welch wrote in the book. “I was labeled abrasive and consistently warned my candor would soon get in the way of my career … and I’m telling you that it was candor that helped make it work.”
Welch did not slow down after leaving GE.
He became a senior adviser with private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice in 2001. He also taught a course on business leadership at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management in 2006. In 2009, Welch founded the Jack Welch Management Institute, an online MBA program that is now part of Strayer University.
While Welch was known for being hypercompetitive, he also stressed giving everyone a fair shake.
In the 2005 book, Winning, Welch wrote that he would like to be remembered “as a huge advocate of candor and meritocracy, and believing everyone deserves a chance. And I’d like to be remembered for trying to make the case that you can never let yourself be a victim.”
Along with Welch’s fame came greater scrutiny. Welch found himself defending his retirement compensation. Amid a wave of corporate scandals, details of Welch’s GE perks emerged in court papers during his 2002 divorce from his wife of 13 years, Jane Beasley. He got millions of dollars in benefits, including unlimited personal use of GE’s planes, office space and financial services.
After the perks became public, Welch reimbursed the company for many of them, and paid for use of aircraft and other services. His first marriage, to Carolyn Osburn, ended amicably in divorce after 28 years in 1987.
Plans for his second divorce were disclosed shortly after Harvard Business Review editor Suzy Wetlaufer revealed she had become romantically involved with Welch while working on a story about him.
Wetlaufer resigned from the editing post in 2002 because of a furor caused by her relationship with Welch.
In a January 2012 interview with Piers Morgan for CNN, when asked how he persuaded Wetlaufer to marry him, Welch replied, “My charm and probably my wallet.”
“We had a little scandal at the beginning,” he continued. “And it’s been the greatest 10 years of our lives.” In his writing and speaking, Welch shared the wisdom he gained in a GE career that began almost immediately after he left grad school. He quickly climbed the ranks, and became the company’s youngest chairman and CEO in 1981, at age 45.
Welch quickly shook up GE, laying off tens of thousands of employees in his first five years.
That earned him the unwanted nickname “Neutron Jack,” after the nuclear weapon that kills people but leaves buildings largely intact. Welch bristled at the name, insisting that successful companies needed to be agile.
But the nickname stuck, and was used by President Donald Trump in a tweet Monday.
Welch also divested GE of billions of dollars in businesses that didn’t live up to his mantra that they be No. 1 or 2 in their markets. The early moves dismantled GE’s bureaucracy and eliminated many layers of reporting relationships.
“He’s quick on the trigger — sometimes too quick,” Noel Tichy, the author of a 1993 book on Welch and a former leader of GE’s vaunted training programs, said in 2001. “He’ll make snap judgments. He’s a human being that has temper tantrums.
“With all that, I think he’s the greatest business leader I ever met,” Tichy said.
“From the day I joined GE to the day I was named CEO, 20 years later, my bosses cautioned me about my candor.” – Jack Welch