Jack Welch, the hard-charging former head of General Electric who transformed his company and corporate America with his ruthless attention to the bottom line, died March 1 at 84.
The cause was renal failure, said family spokeswoman Abby Whalen. She did not say where he died.
The hallmarks of Welch’s tenure during the 1980s and 1990s have become part of the playbook for chief executives everywhere: unflinching layoffs, ambitious expansion around the world, lucrative stock options for high-performing executives and a relentless drive to reward shareholders with stellar earnings quarter after quarterr.
Divisive methods
His methods were divisive. Nicknamed “Neutron Jack” for his massive firings of GE employees, he was hailed in 1999 as “manager of the century” by Fortune magazine.
On paper, the results were undeniable. In his 21 years at the helm of GE, Welch increased annual revenue from $25 billion to $130 billion; profits rose to $15 billion from $1.5 billion; and the company’s total value on the stock market grew 30-fold to more than $400 billion – which at one point made it the most valuable public company in the United States.
His success turned him into a model for middle managers everywhere, who pored over his books on management to learn his methods, or what he called “the Welch Way.”
He was in many ways an unlikely person to lead the buttoned-down General Electric. He was born to working-class Irish American parents without high school degrees.
He had a stutter and began his career at GE as a plastics researcher with a PhD in chemical engineering.
“The odds were against me,” Welch wrote in his best-selling memoir, “Jack: Straight From the Gut,” which was published in 2001 and sold more than 800,000 copies.
Brutally honest
“Many of my peers regarded me as the round peg in a square hole, too different for GE. I was brutally honest and outspoken. I was impatient and, to many, abrasive.”
Welch ran GE as if he were a general who would settle for nothing less than world domination. He spun off units with little sentiment and charged into new industries with bold acquisitions. And he wasn’t afraid to take on more debt to finance the company’s expansion.
Welch’s decisions led — and reflected — the wrenching changes going on more broadly in the U.S. economy as it shifted away from old-line manufacturing toward more services, especially in finance.
He took a company that was making hair dryers and disposable razor cartridges and moved it headlong into commercial banking, high-tech medical devices and television through the takeover of the NBC television network.
His long record of success at pleasing Wall Street was dotted with a number of scandals. In 1992, the company’s aircraft engine division pleaded guilty to defrauding the Pentagon of $42 million and giving the money to an Israeli general to win jet engine orders.