John Francis “Jack” Welch, Jr was born on November 19, 1935.
He was born in Peabody, Massachusetts — originally Irish American with both grandparents being Irish.
He is an American business executive, author and chemical engineer.
He was chairman and CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. During his time at General Electric, the company’s value rose 4,000 per cent.
When he retired from General Electric he took a severance payment of $417 million (Dh1.5 billion) — the largest such payment in history.
He first attended Salem High School and then University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he achieved a BS in chemical engineering in 1957.
He then received a MS and PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1960.
He first joined the company General Electric in 1960 and then became GE’s youngest chairman and CEO in 1981.
Welch’s public philosophy was that a company should be either Number one or Number two in a particular industry.
He would fire the bottom ten per cent of his managers, irrespective of absolute performance.
By 1999 he was named ‘Manager of the Century’ by Fortune magazine.
In 2000, the year before he left, the company’s revenues increased to nearly $130 billion. The company had gone from a market value of $14 billion to one of more than $410 billion at the end of 2004, making it the most valuable company in the world.
He served as Chairman of The Business Council in 1991 and 1992.
He published his book The Winning in 2005, which reached number one on The Wall Street Journal bestseller list.
He has been married three times with his current wife being Suzy Wetlaufer Welch.
Elisar Sasso is an intern at Gulf News
Sign up for the Daily Briefing
Get the latest news and updates straight to your inbox