Jack Welch, the former chairman and CEO of General Electric who dramatically expanded the company”™s market share during a 30-year leadership tenure, died Sunday at the age of 84.
Born John Francis Welch Jr. in Peabody, Massachusetts, on Nov. 13, 1935, Welch”™s father was a conductor on the Boston & Maine Railroad and his mother was a homemaker. During his youth, he held summer jobs as a golf caddie, newspaper delivery boy, shoe salesman and drill press operator. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1957 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and later attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he received a masters and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering.
Welch joined General Electric in 1960 as a junior chemical engineer in the company”™s Pittsfield, Massachusetts, plastics division facility. He worked his way up to vice president and head of the division by 1968 and began an executive ascension to vice chairman in 1979 and chairman and CEO by 1981.
Welch”™s leadership of the company, then headquartered in Fairfield, was marked by dramatic acquisitions ”“ including RCA and Kidder Peabody ”“ and the creation of new businesses, including GE Capital Bank.
He also generated controversy by massive workforce cuts, earning the nickname “Neutron Jack” ”“ a reference to the neutron bomb that would annihilate people but leave buildings intact. In his 2001 autobiography “Jack: Straight From The Gut,” Welch noted that GE had 411,000 employees in the year before he took the chief executive role and had 299,000 five years later.
Welch”™s management style earned very mixed reviews. Fortune magazine hailed him as “manager of the century” in 1999, claiming his actions multiplied GE”™s value “beyond anyone”™s expectations.” But The New York Times complained, “His legacy is not only a changed GE, but a changed American corporate ethos, one that prizes nimbleness, speed and regeneration over older ideals like stability, loyalty and permanence.”
After his retirement in 2001, Welch became a consultant and best-selling author, making numerous appearances on television and at business conferences. Sacred Heart University”™s Jack Welch School of Business was named in his honor in 2006, and he taught at MIT Sloan Management School of Business and created the Jack Welch Management Institute, a program at Cleveland”™s Chancellor University in 2009.
Survivors include his wife, the former Suzy Wetlaufer. The date for his funeral has not been set.
