Jack Welch

John "Jack" Welch is an American chemical engineer, business executive, and author. He was Chairman and CEO of General Electric between 1981 and 2001. During his tenure at GE, the company's value rose 4000%. In 2006 Welch's net worth was estimated at $720 million.

Welch joined General Electric in 1960. He worked as a junior chemical engineer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, at a salary of $10,500. While at GE, he blew off the roof of the factory, and was almost fired for doing so. In 1961, Welch planned to quit his job as junior engineer because he was dissatisfied with the raise offered to him and was unhappy with the bureaucracy he observed at GE.

Welch was named a vice president of GE in 1972. He became senior vice president in 1977 and vice chairman in 1979. Welch became GE's youngest chairman and CEO in 1981.

Through the 1980s, Welch sought to streamline GE. Welch worked to eradicate perceived inefficiency by trimming inventories and dismantling the bureaucracy that had almost led him to leave GE in the past. He closed factories, reduced payrolls and cut lackluster old-line units. Welch's public philosophy was that a company should be either #1 or #2 in a particular industry, or else leave it completely. Welch's strategy was later adopted by other CEOs across corporate America.

Each year, Welch would fire the bottom 10% of his managers. He earned a reputation for brutal candor in his meetings with executives. He rewarded those in the top 20% with bonuses and stock options. He also expanded the broadness of the stock options program at GE from just top executives to nearly one third of all employees. Welch is also known for destroying the nine-layer management hierarchy and bringing a sense of informality to the company.

In 1986, GE acquired RCA. The RCA acquisition resulted in GE selling off RCA properties to other companies and keeping NBC as part of the GE portfolio of businesses. During the 1990s, Welch shifted GE business from manufacturing to financial services through numerous acquisitions.

In 1980, the year before Welch became CEO, GE recorded revenues of roughly $26.8 billion. In 2000, the year before he left, the revenues increased to nearly $130 billion. The company had gone from a market value of $14 billion to one of more than $410 billion at the end of 2004, making it the most valuable company in the world.

At the time of his retirement in 2001, Welch received a salary of $4 million a year, followed by his retirement plan of $8 million a year, which included GE's $80,000 per month luxury apartment, free food and wine, access to a $300,000 per month B737 corporate jet, VIP tickets to the Metropolitan Opera, the Knicks, Wimbledon, the US Open (tennis) and the Red Sox, an office and a secretary in the GE building and a limousine with driver. In 1999 he was named "Manager of the Century" by Fortune magazine.

Welch has received criticism for a lack of compassion for the middle class and working class. By his actions during acquisitions and wholesale shutdowns of GE business units, Welch proved that his technique of only keeping the units your company is "good" at you can maximize.

Following Welch's retirement from GE, he became an adviser to private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and to the chief executive ofIAC, Barry Diller. In addition to his consulting and advisory roles, Welch has been active on the public speaking circuit, and co-wrote a popular column for BusinessWeek with his wife for four years until November 2009. In 2005, he published ‘Winning’, a book about management co-written with his wife, which reached #1 on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list.

Since January 2012, Welch and his wife have written a biweekly column for Reuters and Fortune.

Jack Welch is a global warming skeptic. Yet he has said that every business must embrace green products and green ways of doing business.