The Corporate Divorce of the Century

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Happy Wednesday, and welcome back to Dry Powder.

This week, an excerpt from my new book Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon, which is about, among others, the legendary C.E.O. of GE, Jack Welch, and his time at the helm of one of America’s most iconic corporations. In this chapter, which we’ve pulled exclusively for Puck subscribers, you’ll find details of a scandal-ridden succession drama which set the stage for the next generation of leadership at GE and that may have set in motion a process by which the wrong man was chosen to follow Jack atop GE. I hope you enjoy it and the book. Please don’t hesitate to let me know what you think.

Lastly, as a reminder, I’ll be off this Sunday, but tomorrow, November 17th at 4 p.m. ET, I will be joining my colleague Ben Landy for a private, off the record call with Puck’s Inner Circle members. I’ll be discussing Power Failure, the FTX collapse, Elon’s debt, and more. You can click here to upgrade your account ahead of the call. I hope to see you there.

Bill

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The Corporate Divorce of the Century

By the mid-90s, Jack Welch was forced to ponder succession. Before him were a coterie of bright-eyed prospects—Cote, Immelt, Calhoun, and Nardelli, among them. But in the background was a scandal that befell perhaps his most qualified candidate. This is an excerpt from Power Failure: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon.

WILLIAM D. COHAN

In June 1995, Fortune reported that an “envelope exists” with the names of “two or three” GE executives who would be “capable of immediately taking over” for Jack Welch if he were to become incapacitated. Succession was in the air. But Jack had an intense aversion to the process by which Reg Jones, his predecessor, had selected him. He didn’t mind creating a competition obviously—much of his reputation was built upon the succession of growing earnings every quarter—but what he would not do was bring the finalists to GE’s Fairfield headquarters and have them duke it out in front of him for a year or two. He had hated that Jones did that to him and the other finalists, and he wasn’t going to repeat Jones’s mistake...

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