General Electronic

General Electronic has been ranked 2nd in the Forbes 2010 list as the world’s second largest company. The company has been operating since 1892 and today has managed to acquire various huge companies which include Universal Pictures. The company’s brand is considered as the world’s fourth most recognized brand that has a worth of around $48 billion. Jeffery Immelt is the current CEO of the company who took over on the 7th of September 2001 who took over from Jack Welch. The paper will analyze the current and the X CEO of the company. The analysis will be based on their personal and professional lives along with their impact on the company.

Jack Welch: Jack Welch’s real name is John Francis “Jack” Welch, Jr. who was born on November 19th 1935. He has an extensive professional experience and currently is occupied as an American businessmen and an author as well. Welch had his early education from Salem High School and graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in Bachelor of Science. He received his PhD from the University of Illinois in 1960. After graduating he joined General Electric as a chemical engineer where he showed some unparalleled abilities due to which he was named as the CEO of the company.

He was the youngest CEO of the world at the age of 45. The twenty years that he served at G. E are considered as the most important period for the company. He was considered as a bureaucratic leader who was very stern when it came to ethics and policies. He believed in giving free reign to the managers up to the extent they were following the ethics of the company. His tenure brought immense growth to the company as during this period the company managed to acquire numerous other businesses as well.

The top qualities of Welch as a leader included clear communication across the company and perfectionism and employee empowerment (Jack Welch). Jeffery Immelt: Jeffery R. Immelt was born on February 19 1956 in Ohio. He had his early education from Finney Town High School while later he graduated from Dartmouth College. Later he did his MBA from Harvard Business School. Immelt has been a part of G. E since 1982 where previously he was working as the president of Medical Systems division of G. E. before he took over as the chairman of the company.

Immelt has been named as the most influential people in the world in the Time’s Magazine in 2008. Lately he has been criticized a lot by the media for his actions as the company is also facing a lot of problems and there has been a decrease in the stock price up to 60%. He was a firm believer of innovation and thus focused on innovation in every phase of the business. His focus is to bring efficiency in the company by innovating in the technology. On being compared to Welch he was considered as being more cheered up leader of the team. He is more popular and liked by his subordinates when compared to Welch.

They refer to him as a more considerate and a nice guy. His four most important goals for the company includes having a more intimate relation with the customers, diversified business mix, use of more innovative technology and a much diversified top management (Jeffery Immelt). Current Situation of General Electric General Electric is currently not facing a very good phase of its business. There has been a decrease of 60% in the stock prices of the company with its assets also being decreased to US$782 billion. The company has seen a massive drop in its stock prices which has decreased from $40 to $16.

A lot of people have blamed the chairman Immelt for this billion dollar loss. The chairman has been criticized a lot for his immense expenditure that the company has to bear. He had done some major expenses on the company’s account due to which the company is now facing huge trouble. The analysts have criticized him immensely for his huge compensations which include a lot of cash compensations and bonuses. Immelt has taken around $28. 2 million and $28. 6 million as the cash bonus from the company since his appointment. This had led the company to be low on cash.

Immelt is considered as a good leader but his extravagant expenses is costing the company some huge amount which a lot of analysts believe have contributed the most towards the decline of the company. He has been pretty popular due to his leadership traits but what he lacks is the vision for the company due to which the company is facing a lot of problems (Arends). This is where people think that Welch has been much successful than Immelt because the responsible attitude that Welch had got immense success for the company and that was the reason why he is considered as one of the best leaders in the history of the world (Thornhill and Mark).

Conclusion Both the leaders have been phenomenal in their own ways but still the impact that Jack Welch had could not be forgotten. Immelt is now receiving a lot of criticism and is blamed solely by various analysts for the problems in the company. His extravagant expenses are the major reason why he is criticized and it has also been considered the major reason why the company is now low on cash. Works Cited Arends, Brett. “GE has been an investor disaster under Jeff Immelt.

” 8 March 2010. 25 August 2010 <http://www. marketwatch. com/story/story/print? guid=C7AEF48E-344A-499C-9487-E6A17295FCF8>. “Jack Welch. ” n. d. 25 August 2010 <http://www. woopidoo. com/biography/jack-welch. htm>. “Jeffery Immelt. ” n. d. 25 August 2010 <http://www. woopidoo. com/biography/jeffrey-immelt/index. htm>. Thornhill, Stewart and Ken Mark. “General Electric: From Jack Welch to Jeffrey Immelt. ” Harvard Business Review (2008): 10.