The Jack Welch Conundrum

Jack Welch
Photo by Brooks Kraft/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
November 14, 2021

The news that GE, the venerable conglomerate founded in 1892, was committing an act of corporate meiosis and splitting itself into three pieces—a jet-engine manufacturing company; a healthcare machine manufacturing company; and a power business—leads me to ask a deceptively simple question. Who lost GE, and when?