Jack Welch, former CEO and Chairman of General Electric (GE) has passed on at the age of 84.
According to his wife, Suzy, “Neutron Jack” died yesterday of renal failure. Also known as the “Manager of the Century”, GE became the world’s most valuable company, after Microsoft under his leadership.
Born on the 19th of November 1935 to John Francis Welch, Sr, a railroad conductor and Grace (Andrews), a homemaker, Jack Welch studied chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He went on to attend graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He graduated from the University of Illinois, in 1960, with a masters and a PhD in chemical engineering.
Welch joined General Electric in 1960 and in 1981, he became GE’s youngest chairman and CEO, succeeding Reginald H. Jones. Under Welch’s leadership, GE increased market value from $12 billion in 1981 to $410 billion when he retired, making 600 acquisitions while shifting into emerging markets.
He was ruthless about performance. He insisted that all of GE’s divisions be market leaders. ″Fix it, close it or sell it.”
He retired from GE in September 2001. He received a record severance payment of $417 million when he retired. Upon his retirement, The New York Times published an editorial that gushed over his professional record.
“Mr. Welch was a white-collar revolutionary, bent throughout his career at G.E. on championing radical change and smashing the complacency of the established order,” the editorial said. “His legacy is not only a changed G.E., but a changed American corporate ethos, one that prizes nimbleness, speed and regeneration over older ideals like stability, loyalty and permanence.”
Welch had four children from his first marriage to Carolyn Osburn in 1959, They divorced in 1987 and he remarried to corporate lawyer Jane Beasley for 13 years. They divorced in 2002 amid revelations of an affair with Harvard Business Review editor Suzy Wetlaufer that began when Wetlaufer was interviewing him for an article.
The two married in 2004 and went on to collaborate on his 2005 book “Winning,” which reached No. 1 on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list, and appeared on New York Times Best Seller list.
