Iconic American CEO transformed GE into industrial juggernaut
Enterprise’s market value grew from US$12B to US$410B under his leadership
NEW YORK Jack Welch, who grew General Electric Co during the 1980s and 1990s into the most valuable public company in the United States, has died at age of 84, the conglomerate said on Monday.
Welch — known as “Neutron Jack” for cutting thousands of jobs — bought and sold scores of businesses, expanding the industrial giant into financial services and consulting. Under him, GE’S market value grew from US$12 billion to US$410 billion, making Welch one of the most iconic chief executives of his era.
But his push to build out the GE Capital financing business nearly proved the undoing of the entire enterprise during the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, and GE now trades at a fraction of its peak value.
“When the book about business leaders in this century is written, Jack Welch will be near the very top,” said Thomas Cooke, professor at Georgetown University’s Mcdonough School of Business. “What he did as the leader of GE was remarkable.”
U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted: “There was no corporate leader like “neutron” Jack,” adding his warmest sympathies “to his wonderful wife & family!”
In December 1980, it was announced he would succeed CEO Reginald Jones and in April 1981 he took over as the company’s eighth chairman and CEO. He served in that position until he retired in September 2001, succeeded by Jeff Immelt.
“Today is a sad day for the entire GE family,” said H. Lawrence Culp Jr., GE’S chairman and CEO, in a statement. “Jack was larger than life and the heart of GE for half a century. He reshaped the face of our company and the business world.”
Through streamlining operations, acquiring new businesses and ensuring that each business under the GE umbrella was one of the best in its field, the company was able to expand dramatically from 1981 to 2001.
Welch’s aggressive, in-your-face style and edict to be No. 1 or 2 in every major sector was embraced by both management consultants and business school faculty, said Tim Hubbard, assistant professor of management at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.
“It’s very difficult to predict how things would have worked out if Jack stayed on deck, but certainly what happened to General Electric after he left is not a very positive story,” said Hubbard. “The failure of subsequent CEOS underscores how important Welch’s leadership was to GE.”
After hitting its peak under Welch, GE’S scope narrowed and its market value fell under successor Immelt. The company spun off much of its insurance business into Genworth Financial in 2004.
The transformation to industrials accelerated after GE needed a bailout during the 2008 financial crisis. In 2015, activist investor Nelson Pelz’s Trian Partners bought a Us$2.5-billion stake in GE and pushed for further focus on core industrial businesses, prompting Immelt to sell of most of the remaining parts of GE Capital.
Born in 1935 in Peabody, Mass., Welch received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts, and his M.S. and PHD degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1960.
In 1960, Welch joined GE as a chemical engineer at its plastics division in Pittsfield, Mass. He was elected the company’s youngest vice-president in 1972 and became vice-chairman in 1979.
In 1980, the year before Welch became CEO, GE recorded revenues of roughly US$26.8 billion; in 2000, the year before he left, they were nearly US$130 billion. The company was one of the most valuable and the largest company in the world at the time of his retirement, up from America’s tenth largest by market cap in 1981.
Under Welch, GE became a training ground for business leaders who often carried his ideas to other corners of the economy. Welch put a premium on training leaders though a tough system that targeted advancement only for those who showed the best results.
He continued this work after retirement, briefly teaching a leadership course at MIT’S Sloan School of Management and, later, founding an online MBA program called the Jack Welch Management Institute. That program is now part of Strayer University.
Books by Welch include Winning, from 2005, and Jack: Straight from the Gut, published in 2001.
“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others,” Welch wrote in a book called Winning.