Even in the late 1990s when Jack Welch was riding high, General Electric’s chief executive was a divisive figure.
He had been dubbed “Neutron Jack” for the brutal job cuts he instigated in the 1980s, the first of his two decades in charge at GE. He had turned the conglomerate, nicknamed “Generous Electric” in the 1920s for its benevolence, into a byword for ruthless techniques such as “rank and yank”, his unbending policy that the lowest-performing 10 per cent of any team should be dismissed annually.
Yet he was also on the brink of being named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine. His undoubted success in adding value for shareholders was much admired. His methods were copied by his corporate peers. In the US and beyond, it was hard to understand rampant corporate capitalism and fast-spreading globalisation without knowing about, or referring to, the rise of GE under Welch, a small man with a powerful international reach.