The Rise and Fall of General Electric I Anthony Scaramucci and William D. Cohan I Open Book 

Jack Welch is what happened to GE. Got rid of a LOT of productive employees and turned GE into a bank, knowing nothing about lending and stepped into a big pile of shit known as the financial crisis.

Jack Welch was one of the most OVERRATED CEO's in America's history.

After watching this for 9 minutes, this person seems like a Jack Welch apologist. The seeds of decline of GE happened well before Jeff Immelt took the reins. Jack basically bled the company dry and did not reinvest as he should have so that he could always beat quarterly earnings. Totally short term focused. Not long term focused.

I blame Jack Welch.

This guy sounds like one of those people who wants to kiss up to big business for speaking engagements, consulting, etc. He's an apologist for hire to help CEOs tell others why they were not screwups, incompetent, cruel, losers. Before you do anything else, read welch's book "Jack..." The narcissistic, psychopathic elements are there for all to see. He talks about how he was caught with a woman and was almost thrown out of the university, which would have ended him. Not a word about the woman, he made it all about him (the subtext sounded like "non-consensual sex"). he can't understand why the son of a guy he laid off, beat up his own kid; he was shocked his godly behavior could come back on him. he played himself up to be the unmatched business genius, puffing up GE's stock price with every "brilliant" "innovation", like 6 sigma (which turned out to be a total joke). he hollowed out a company, rose on the backs of his employees, created a persona for GE and himself as superstars based on business erotic fantasy. Then as welch's bubble was ready to burst, he dumped it on a naive Immelt. Huge companies don't fail overnight. It's a decade or more in the making. It was on welch's watch.

William Cohen was an M & A Banker. That tells you the slanted perspective that colors his presentation. Welch created a house of cards. He had good timing as to when to get out. He left a ticking time bomb sitting on that house of cards. Imelt wasn't up to the job of defusing the bomb. Would anybody have been? Cohen kept emphasizing "the importance of choosing the right CEO." Had Welch been "the right CEO" he would've run GE in such a way that it would've been more stable when he retired. Welch was really the king of snake oil salesmen. His "creation of wealth" was an illusion that much of Wall Street cheered on. Until the truth became unavoidable.

Jack Welch was the problem. There is a book out about how he did more than damage GE, he broke capitalism in the US. Converting GE into a financial services firm from a leading manufacturer was the problem. Welch built an empire, not a company.

I love the Mooch, but these are two finance guys answering the wrong question. They're answering the question, "Why G.E. failed as a bank that led to its failure as a company?" instead of the question, "Why G.E. should never have become a bank in the first place, that led to its failure as a company?"

There is a parallel between GE and Boeing. Very large late stage companies where leadership transitioned from ground breaking new products to administrations that were more interested in short term market performance. It’s a classic taxonomy of corporate lifecycles.

As someone who had to do business with GE, their arrogance and bullying was sickening and that was from the lower end, so God only knows what was going on in the board room. Can't say I lost any sleep when the giant fell, probably looking for my dancing shoes to do a quick jig on the grave.

Jack Welch was the problem. GE became a company more interested in playing with the tax code rather than making stuff. The tax lawyers became more important than the engineers. well stuff gets old and other companies that make better stuff turn up and take your market ie Siemens, Rockwell etc.

I worked for GE during the time Jack Welch was the CEO. I can assure you he was the most ruthless corporate leader I can think of in the last 40+ years. If you read his book "Winning," you will understand what I am saying.

Long and short: risks, abandoning hard industry, and making money from nothing didn’t work; and WHEN will regulations get some teeth? Otherwise, this whole conversation is interesting and also amounts to horseshit for America. If things don’t change drastically and prevent these stupid operations.

Wall Street does not have a good way of valuing conglomerates - so the age of conglomerates was dieing during late 90's early 00's. The PE rating was reduced because of that, and the stock tanked. That's what put GE in tough position prior to 2008. Jack loved making deals and made GE a huge conglomerate. Made him rich and famous. His last huge deal that thankfully got tanked was with Honeywell. Jeff could have done better, but I think it was Jack Welch's actions to make GE a giant Conglomerate that killed GE.

GE became a loan shark that was on the arm for their own capital and couldn’t make the Vig.

Mooch. If you're listening. Please try to pass message to Harris team that they need to emphasize at debate that Trump posted about 50 times on Truth Social during her 40 minute DNC speech alone meanwhile it took him over 3 hours to say anything during the capitol insurrection

GE Capital was also a pretty ruthless lender that did not do well with its borrowers when they got into trouble. They lost shitloads of money on debt that should have been “worked out” to their benefit - rather that just be called.

Loved this convo . The inside story/lessons/personalties of companies is engrossing. And on a separate note, hat tip to you Anthony for predicting Harris’s strong rollout and candidacy.

what are the odds that elon musk will run his companies into the ground while chasing the imaginary woke boogeman

Sometimes, I wonder if companies like GE would have been fine if the derivative market was better regulated.

One of GE's biggest mistakes was financial services and particularly long term care insurance. LTC at the time was a long tail risk business for which there was no actuarial data or reality-based information to evaluate the risk. Nobody understood it which is par for the course in health insurance but health insurance has a short tail. And its got a risk tail worse than workers comp. Everyone lost their shirts on the 1990s products and the current stuff ain't much better.

Great, so today my blood pressure gets sent through the roof again, having been reminded what a scoundrel Welch was, and how incompetent Imhelt was. But the real frosting on the cake is knowing that G. E. was managed so close to the line that a temporary glitch in the capital markets nearly bankrupted them. And they had to go beg the government for a special deal. And who paid for that special deal? The working class of America, with annual incomes of 50k to 150k (at the time). The average tax paying working man. The very people Welch despised so much, who he took so much joy in firing. Is it too much to ask that with all the BILLIONS upon BILLIONS upon BILLIONS upon BILLIONS that General Electric made over the DECADES, that maybe, just maybe, they should put something aside for a rainy day? 😮

Same thing happened to Britain's GEC. Not just the new management but decisions from the previous teams.

90% of new GE appliances are made by the Chinese company HAIER the refrigerators are made to run 18 to 30 months tops

Nice, probative interview. Thanks Anthony!

Jack Welch destroyed GE. And here we have two individuals of questionable intelligence and motives vying to give him a reach around.

Like many former customers, I had great relationships with some of the nonfinancial operations of GE. The sheer dickwittery of the financial operations convinced many of us to have nothing to do with anything stamped with GE unless absolutely necesary. Still dont, good riddance.

GE was a great engineering company that made great stuff before Jack Welch. Jack Welch's GE made up stuff. That is not innovation. That is rearranging the deck chairs. The company stagnated. It's just like Boeing is doing today. Jack Welch cared about Wall Street, and Wall Street cares about one thing. The stock price. It does not care about the products the company makes. They do not care about the employees who make the products or the consumer who purchases these products. As long as the stock price is maintained artificially or not, they don't care.

Industrial companies must focus on making, innovating and selling good products profitably, and leave the financial acrobatics to banks and investment institutions.

Why a million aren't tuned in to the A. Scaramucci podcast channel blows my mind. ..

what a great pair these two, awesome conversation

Immelt is indeed an honorable and decent man. GEs main mistake is getting into cyclical businesses without firing 25% of the company just before the downturns.

Lol 29.9k

Scaramucci got good genes.

Interesting... thank you...

Interesting conversation. Also William looks like John Daly’s sober better looking younger brother

Also when Jack Welch was president he didn't have to deal with DEI

. . . insightful, civil conversation about one of US’ greatest companies.

GE has one of the best Stock performers of the last 4 years.