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