Particularly compelling to me were those portions of the book which concerned GE’s global dealings, and those portions which concerned the 2007-2008 financial crisis, which was really the catalyst to (eventually) showing that GE was an emperor with, shall we say, very ill-fitting clothes. As an example, the description of Jeff Immelt’s trip to Washington to plead GE’s case to Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson and FDIC head Sheila Bair brought events having global significance down to a human level. (On the visit to Bair: “An assistant came out and told the two men that the head of the FDIC had no time for them. No time to see the CEO of GE? Jeff insisted on waiting to see Bair. The threat to GE was existential. They bided their time in the FDIC lobby while the cleaning staff polished the marble floor. ‘At 240 pounds, I’d be difficult to force out the door,’ Jeff allowed.”) In 1922, GE began making electric home appliances, such as the first electric stoves, washing machines, and refrigerators.

In 1890, Thomas Alva Edison, inventor of the light bulb, established the Edison General Electric Co, which later merged with a rival to form the General Electric Co. At the Fairfield headquarters, Grewal worked on automation of the systems GE used around the world for design and engineering. That took him to GE Aviation, the jet engine-maker based in Ohio, where he led teams that digitized the design and manufacturing process, pioneering 3-D modeling ahead of competitor Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford. The young GE had advantages that had an expiry date. It was given license to collude with British Marconi to control and protect hugely valuable patents in the US market. It was permitted to collude with competitors over supplies for building out the electric power infrastructure. Bloomberg used revenue figures for each of the segments and its constituent sub-segments from the most recently available updated filing, unless that number factored in a unit bought or sold after the year in question, in which case the most appropriate filing was used. Segment revenue data became less detailed from 2003-2004 and 2006-2009, but enough historical data was supplied in re-filings or later filings that Bloomberg was able to use the most recent numbers for those years.

Immelt tried to stem the company’s reliance on financial speculation, but he ended up by inviting the enemy in. In 2015, Trian Partners, an asset management firm known for shaking up underperforming companies, became a top investor. Billionaire co-founder Nelson Peltz, who voted for Trump in 2016, was relentless in his pursuit of shareholder value, so it was perhaps inevitable that the firm would demand changes – including Immelt’s head. GE now has a new CEO, Larry Culp, who works closely with Peltz (neither spoke with Cohan for the book). Last year, Culp finally “pulled the plug on the company”. The last chapters was about the CEO John Flannery, and his short tenure before being replaced by the present CEO Larry Culp. What I hadn’t realised was that John Flannery was pushed out by activist shareholders, bought in by Jeff Immelt to provide expertise to the board. Also, the plan to break GE apart was originally put forward by Flannery, but did not gain the support of the board to push it through. The present CEO, Larry Culp was basically placed as CEO by a shareholders and board putsch as the person most likely to realise shareholder value, something he has so far totally failed to do. Welch later admitted to other GE executives that the choice was one of his biggest mistakes, according to Fox Business. Examples abound. For example, as the owner of NBCUniversal, GE was huge in the media and entertainment industry but didn’t do enough innovating. “GE could have thought of Netflix, right?” Today, Grewal, 73, heads Veoci, a software firm with 100 employees in New Haven that he co-founded with four other partners, all of whom worked with him at GE on an IT platform the partners reinvented after they jumped from the mothership.

The real damage for the company was done by Welch and I felt the author could have done a lot more analysis of the real nature of GE under Welch, especially the creative accounting using GE Capital and other tools of mass financial deception. The book "Lights Out" for example, provides a much deeper insight into these dark practices. Power Failure by William Cohan is a tour de force of reporting, a deeply researched chronicle of the flawed personalities and dysfunctional company politics that led General Electric, once hailed as the great American corporate success, to self-destruct. The story reads like a tragedy.” Cordiner’s system worked when it came to meeting goals. Unfortunately, it also incentivized meeting goals however you could do it, no matter the ethics preached at the top. In the resulting pressure cooker environment, corruption took hold and managers with a strong sense of ethics sometimes had to find somewhere else to work.Over the decades, GE spent much of its time developing new technologies, ranging from home appliances to commercial jet engines. Many of its innovations resulted from merging with smaller companies to gain access to their inventions. In a masterful re-appraisal of a company that once claimed to “bring good things to life,” pre-eminent financial journalist William D. Cohan argues that the incredible story of GE’s rise and fall is not only a paragon, but also a prism through which we can better understand American capitalism. Beginning with its founding, innovations, and exponential growth through acquisitions and mergers, Cohan plumbs the depths of GE's storied management culture, its pioneering doctrine of shareholder value, and its seemingly hidden blind spots, to reveal that GE wasn't immune from the hubris and avoidable mistakes suffered by many other corporations. By the 1940s, GE had transformed into a corporate juggernaut. The core of the company had already begun to change – Fortune magazine called it an investment trust that also built things.

The rise of GE capital meant that the company drive for continual growth was more driven by financial instruments than by industrial excellence, at the same time imposing debt on the company credit card fuelled by GE’s access to cheap money through its AAA credit rating. It also allowed the company to give the impression of flawless prediction and management by allowing GE to move money around at will to hide financial weaknesses.

Zo werken we samen in de toekomst: nooit meer aanwezig bij meetings

Hospital management technology was another field GE could have pioneered, Grewal suggests, since the company was, and is, a top producer of medical equipment such as CAT scanners. William Cohan has written a fine book and he appears knowledgeable and up to the analytic task he sets for himself in telling this story. The book is well written and covers a huge amount of ground and Cohan does a fine job in discussing the various events and phases that GE goes through. Industrial, which includes lighting, transportation, rail transportation, consumer appliances, and home and business solutions

In October 2018, Culp took his first step https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ge-results-idUSKCN1N41BJ in reviving the conglomerate as it slashed its dividend to a penny from 12 cents to preserve cash. The dramatic rise—and unimaginable fall—of America’s most iconic corporation by New York Times bestselling author andpre-eminent financial journalist William D. Cohan

Immelt survived that crisis, but GE’s fortunes did not turn around in the coming years. Immelt was eventually fired. Its 127-year history was marked by revolutionary technologies, immense profit, and now, alleged fraud. This article, originally published in 2019, was republished on Nov. 9, 2021, when General Electric Co. announced that it would split into three separate companies. GE plans to retain its aviation business while spinning off the health-care and energy operations by early 2024.