New York Times reporter and "Corner Office" columnist David Gelles
reveals legendary GE CEO Jack Welch to be the root of all that's
wrong with capitalism today and offers advice on how we might right
those wrongs. In 1981, Jack Welch took over General Electric and
quickly rose to fame as the first celebrity CEO. He golfed with
presidents, mingled with movie stars, and was idolized for growing
GE into the most valuable company in the world. But Welch's
achievements didn't stem from some greater intelligence or business
prowess. Rather, they were the result of a sustained effort to push
GE's stock price ever higher, often at the expense of workers,
consumers, and innovation. In this captivating, revelatory book,
David Gelles argues that Welch single-handedly ushered in a new,
cutthroat era of American capitalism that continues to this day.
Gelles chronicles Welch's campaign to vaporize hundreds of
thousands of jobs in a bid to boost profits, eviscerating the
country's manufacturing base and destabilizing the middle class.
Welch's obsession with downsizing-he eliminated 10% of employees
every year-fundamentally altered GE and inspired generations of
imitators who have employed his strategies at other companies
around the globe. In his day, Welch was corporate America's leading
proponent of mergers and acquisitions, using deals to gobble up
competitors and giving rise to an economy that is more concentrated
and less dynamic. And Welch pioneered the dark arts of
"financialization," transforming GE from an admired industrial
manufacturer into what was effectively an unregulated bank. The
finance business was hugely profitable in the short term and helped
Welch keep GE's stock price ticking up. But ultimately,
financialization undermined GE and dozens of other Fortune 500
companies. Gelles shows how Welch's celebrated emphasis on
increasing shareholder value by any means necessary (layoffs,
outsourcing, offshoring, acquisitions, and buybacks, to name but a
few tactics) became the norm in American business generally. He
demonstrates how that approach has led to the greatest
socioeconomic inequality since the Great Depression and harmed many
of the very companies that have embraced it. And he shows how a
generation of Welch acolytes radically transformed companies like
Boeing, Home Depot, Kraft Heinz, and more. Finally, Gelles
chronicles the change that is now afoot in corporate America,
highlighting companies and leaders who have abandoned Welchism and
are proving that it is still possible to excel in the business
world without destroying livelihoods, gutting communities, and
spurning regulation.
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