Power Failure

September 15, 2022
A business journalist traces the rise and fall of General Electric, the company that once exemplified American business. There was a time when GE, a key player in the electricity revolution that powered America in the 20th century, was a leader in innovation and acumen, a reputation that persisted into the postwar era as it became a diversified conglomerate. Now there are only scattered fragments and a broken reputation. In this hefty study, Cohan, a former investment banker who has written multiple books on finance and Wall Street, delves into the records of the company's early days, but he also presents the results of his interviews with CEOs of the modern era: Jack Welch, Jeff Immelt, and John Flannery. The current CEO, Larry Culp, declined to participate. Welch's drive took the company into new areas, but his tenure was also problematic. GE's strength was always industrial operations, but Welch moved it into media and financial services, using its internal bank GE Capital as the springboard. Welch picked Immelt as his successor but later said that the choice was a mistake. Immelt, for his part, claims that he spent much of his tenure cleaning up disasters that Welch swept under the rug (all of which he covers in detail in his 2021 memoir, Hot Seat). By the time Welch stepped down in 2001, the company had become dangerously overextended. The 2008 financial crisis exposed the corporation's myriad weaknesses, and a painful period of sell-offs began. Flannery tried to bring order to the chaos with a proposal for radical restructuring, but he was fired after only 15 months. This is a long, complicated story, and there are times when Cohan struggles to keep the sprawling cast of squabbling characters organized. As he capably shows, all of GE's leaders made mistakes, but there was also a pervasive sense of hubris. Would-be corporate titans, take note. A sweeping tale of ambition, arrogance, egos, and feuds--and how they brought down a once-great company.

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September 26, 2022
Cohan (The Last Tycoons), a journalist and former investment banker, delivers an ambitious history of General Electric, suggesting that the company’s story offers “a cautionary tale about hubris, blind ambition, and the limits of believing—and trying to live up continuously to—a flawed corporate mythology.” The author tracks that mythology, which “embodied both the muscle of American business—entrepreneurial drive, inventiveness, financial legerdemain— and its weaknesses,” from the company’s early days in the late 1800s with Thomas Alva Edison and Charles Albert Coffin at the helm, through the reigns of Jack Welch, “the octogenarian titan of American capitalism” who took over GE in the middle of a price-fixing scandal in the 1960s, and Jeff Immelt, who was running GE’s medical equipment business when he was tapped to be CEO in 2001. Meticulously researched, Cohan’s history covers the EPA/Hudson river scandal in the 1970s (in which GE was caught dumping chemicals), the late-’90s immersion of “Six Sigma” statistics-based practices into corporate life, and intense succession battles. Cohan’s access to the major players bears significant fruit, and the resulting narrative is dramatic without being overblown, making for a gripping account of a corporate behemoth and the men who ran it. Business history buffs, take note. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary.

November 1, 2022

General Electric (GE), which started with Edison's incandescent lightbulb, grew into a company that owned subsidiaries in nearly every industry until its demise in 2021, when it announced it would split into three different enterprises focused on aerospace, healthcare, and energy. Such an important and massive conglomerate that dominated American business for most of the last century requires a substantial tome, which is exactly what Cohan (The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Fr�res & Co.) delivers. The book comes in at just over 800 pages, with more than half dedicated to the tenure of Jack Welch (1981-2001) and Jeff Immelt (2001-17). It also points to how those two men not only embodied GE but came to represent the American CEO. The author's analysis not only focuses on the influence of these two CEOs, but it also delves into the financial health of the company to depict how specific events, such as the 2008 global financial crisis, put cracks in the foundation of the company that led to its rapid demise. VERDICT Cohan's thorough research and interviews with Jack Welch and others give readers a firsthand look at the rise and fall of an American institution.--John Rodzvilla

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