The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate Americaand How to Undo His Legacy

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New York Times Bestseller

New York Times reporter and Corner Office columnist David Gelles reveals legendary GE CEO Jack Welch to be the root of all thats wrong with capitalism today and offers advice on how we might right those wrongs.

In 1981, Jack Welch took over General Electric and quickly rose to fame as the first celebrity CEO. He golfed with presidents, mingled with movie stars, and was idolized for growing GE into the most valuable company in the world. But Welchs achievements didnt stem from some greater intelligence or business prowess. Rather, they were the result of a sustained effort to push GEs stock price ever higher, often at the expense of workers, consumers, and innovation. In this captivating, revelatory book, David Gelles argues that Welch single-handedly ushered in a new, cutthroat era of American capitalism that continues to this day.

Gelles chronicles Welchs campaign to vaporize hundreds of thousands of jobs in a bid to boost profits, eviscerating the countrys manufacturing base, and destabilizing the middle class. Welchs obsession with downsizinghe eliminated 10% of employees every yearfundamentally altered GE and inspired generations of imitators who have employed his strategies at other companies around the globe. In his day, Welch was corporate Americas leading proponent of mergers and acquisitions, using deals to gobble up competitors and giving rise to an economy that is more concentrated and less dynamic. And Welch pioneered the dark arts of financialization, transforming GE from an admired industrial manufacturer into what was effectively an unregulated bank. The finance business was hugely profitable in the short term and helped Welch keep GEs stock price ticking up. But ultimately, financialization undermined GE and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies.

Gelles shows how Welchs celebrated emphasis on increasing shareholder value by any means necessary (layoffs, outsourcing, offshoring, acquisitions, and buybacks, to name but a few tactics) became the norm in American business generally. He demonstrates how that approach has led to the greatest socioeconomic inequality since the Great Depression and harmed many of the very companies that have embraced it. And he shows how a generation of Welch acolytes radically transformed companies like Boeing, Home Depot, Kraft Heinz, and more. Finally, Gelles chronicles the change that is now afoot in corporate America, highlighting companies and leaders who have abandoned Welchism and are proving that it is still possible to excel in the business world without destroying livelihoods, gutting communities, and spurning regulation.

Author Bio

David Gelles is the Corner Office columnist and a business reporter for the New York Times. Since joining the Times in 2013, he has written about CEOs, finance, technology, media, and more. He was part of the team that covered the fallout from the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets, work that won the 2020 Gerald Loeb Award for Breaking News Reporting. A student of Buddhism and a meditator for more than twenty years, David is an authority on the intersection of mindfulness and the business world. His 2015 book, Mindful Work: How Meditation is Changing Business from the Inside Out, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Before joining the Times, he was a reporter for the Financial Times.