“I don’t think Jack Welch was ever as good as he was made out to be,” said Mr. Damodaran, who has spent years trying to value G. E.
During Mr. Welch’s tenure, “he benefited from the growth of financial services
in the American economy and the growth of GE Capital,” Mr. Damodaran added.
“About the best that can be said is that he enabled G. E.
to survive through a difficult time,” said Bruce Greenwald, professor of finance and asset management at Columbia.
As Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at the New York University Stern School of Business, put it, “It’s always tough to follow a legend.”
Suffice to say that Mr. Immelt won’t be writing a book like Mr. Welch’s national best
seller, “Jack: Straight From the Gut,” to celebrate his tenure at the helm of G. E.
But ultimately, it may be the much-lauded Mr. Welch whose reputation emerges more tarnished.
“They’re much more focused on industrial production.”
Both Mr. Greenwald and Mr. Damodaran said the Welch conglomerate model had been thoroughly repudiated, so much so
that there is a widely recognized “conglomerate discount” applied by investors to the stock prices of companies consisting of businesses with no obvious synergies.
Scott Davis, a Barclays managing director, said on CNBC that Mr. Immelt’s tenure was “an unmitigated disaster for shareholders.”
Mr. Welch brought much needed energy and charisma to the chief executive’s job and streamlined G. E.’s bloated bureaucracy.