YouSaid · the spoken record

William D. Cohan

lines on the record: 152
first: 2023-02-03
most recent: 2023-02-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“From the Bernie Mayoff scheme. Remember, a few years ago, he also took his vast accounting skills and forensic skills and applied them to GE working for a short seller. And he produced a document called That was supposedly definitive and that became pretty much totally debunked.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“David Zaslov, the head of Warner Brothers Discovery, loves the guy. I mean, people who left GE and worked for him loved the guy. And so manipulation and fraud, those are big words, okay? Another more charitable way to look at it is.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're more generous than I am to Jack Wells. Well, I mean, I am more generous perhaps to Jack in what he was doing than you are. Yes, you know, maybe because...”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the accounting mumbo jumbo that was contained in there. Yeah, there was an awful lot of that. You could never figure out what the, or you still cannot, if I may, figure out GE's earnings. It's always, well, you know, we can't compare this quarter to that quarter because in this quarter there was this discontinued operation or that special charge. And oh, by the way, the pandemic and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See, this is what did happen. Was what I call obfuscation. Constant obscation. They would make big acquisitions and then, of course, everyone would say, oh, well, now everything has to be integrated. The special charges, discontinued operations, we're going to have to wait for this to get all smoothed out. And that would go on year after year after year. Constant inability to compare apples and apples and apples and oranges. And then after Sarbanes-Oxley passed, The GE annual report became like a textbook. So you couldn't parse it even if you knew what you were parsing”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, if you have those assets. And you've promised research the street you're going to do X dollars per share and then you don't do it, then obviously people are going to fall out of love with you. And if you do do it, they're going to love you. And if you do it because you're selling a building that you own or selling warrants that you own or monetizing the equity in a business that you own in the market to make up any shortfall going on in the industrial side of the business, that's not manipulation. That's not fraud. That's just telling people doing what you told people you were going to do. Why is that a problem? So my pushback is just that.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, I go back to what I said before, and maybe it's because... Jack repeatedly made this argument to me. Maybe it's because I worked at G Capital. Maybe it's because I understood and understand how the two pieces of GE fit together.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Jack goes on CNBC in April of 2008 to criticize Jeff and GE for missing the first quarter of 2008 earnings. And he says on national television, if Jeff misses earnings again, I'm going to take a gun out and shoot him on national television.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. The financial crisis of 2008, where everybody was focused on Wall Street. And even the car companies, the dirty little secret of the 2008 financial crisis was GE and GE Capital. For sure.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I spent a lot of time with Jeff Immolt too many, many hours, just like I did with Jack. Of course, I've read Jeff's book, Hot Seat many times. You're right. I know Jeff privately was quite miffed. Don't forget in whatever was April of 2008 after Jeff announced that the first quarter of 2008 was going to be a major miss. He had promised he was going to make X amount of money, and then it was a major miss. He didn't do any of the things because don't forget, Bear Stearns went down the tubes, the levers that he might have usually pulled. Weren't available like selling GE capital assets was not an option, right?”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so they were very desirable as CEOs of other companies. So headhunters would, of course, go there and pick them off left and right.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“GE had, of course, had Crotonville, which was the management development training center, which was world famous. They had executives were schooled in Six Sigma, whether it was worthwhile or not. And they were rotated around in all sorts of positions. So they, you know, had a very eclectic and diverse, both manufacturing and finance background, most of them.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Dave tried to, you know, he'd been at GE his whole career too and tried to discuss it with Jack and try to buy himself more time and tried to have Jack explain to him why he was being like, oh, Jack, basically just wanted nothing to do with that conversation, just kept repeating over and over and over again. It's over Dave. Just take your stuff and go. I want you out by the end of the year, whatever it was, and just go. And so Jack, it was like a light switch. Once he'd made a decision and that's it, that was it. You're out. Either he had that discussion over and over again with people, or they realized they weren't going to make it on their own. And so, you know, they were constantly being headhunted because, you know, of”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Potential CEO candidates that they weren't going to make it and firing them. I tell the great story of Dave Cody, who also ran the major appliance business for a period of time. Jack called him in, and of course Dave Cody went on to be the CEO of Honeywell, and Honeywell was incredibly successful. Of course, Jack could have bought Honeywell. That's another story. But Dave Cody went on to become CEO of Honeywell, and Honeywell's market value exceeded GE's for a long period of time. And Jack admitted to me that he made a mistake by getting rid of Dave Cody. And Dave Cody's a great guy, by the way. But Jack, he was running major appliance business, which was their most difficult business. It was like 13 out of 13 in the GE portfolio. And Jack called him up one day and basically had dinner with him and said, that's it, Dave. You're out”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jamie ain't going anywhere as far as anybody can tell. But you can see, even with Jamie, a lot of top executives have left, and they've become CEOs of other financial institutions. And the Jamie Diamond coaching tree. Is large and influential. The Coach K coaching tree is large and influential. Jack Welch's coaching tree was large and influential. And Jack, and I'm sure Jamie is the same way, had no hesitation in telling.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think that there's an analogy to be made with Jamie Diamond and Jake Morgan Chase, right? Jamie's been there since, whatever, 2000. And so that's 18 years. Jack was there for 20 years.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Blamed it on. Well, the business wasn't. The business he was running was the G's toughest business before they sold it. And Jack basically told him if you don't lose weight, you're not going to ever be the CEO of this place.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in fact, once when Jeff Immolt was working his way up and was head of major appliances, I guess he had gained a lot of weight and was weighed like 280 pounds or something. Oh, that big. Well, he had played football at Dartmouth”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Crushes it. Well, he solves it, $3 million. He solves it. So for Jack, but of course, then it got relitigated during his tenure, and he was against it the whole time. And then even ultimately Jeff Immels GE that had to pay the money.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, of course, asbestos is much worse. Than PCBs, but whatever GE, the whole thing became a Cos Celeb that went on for decades.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The month. Exactly. Three million with the state. It was in the New York Times, a picture of Jack reaching a deal with the state. And long story short, that, again, the EPA got involved and other state conservation people got involved and that whole agreement, even though it was signed, and G, I think even paid the money, that got completely overturned. Jack thought it was ridiculous. Then over time, and it went on through Jack's tenure”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With knowledge and approval. You know, then all of a sudden the EPA began to think that there were reports of PCBs in the milk in Japan making people sick. So there was starting to be some data and evidence that this chemical could be dangerous to people, but not necessarily completely definitive. And Jack, for one, you know, did not believe they were dangerous. So then it became his problem to clean up, like Reg Jones gave it to him to clean up, maybe because, you know, Pittsfield was near the Hudson and he was up there anyway and he was a go-getter. And if anybody could. And a local guy. And a local guy.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not a scientist. I don't know what the science is. I know it's very controversial. The PCBs were discharged into the Hudson pretty far up the Hudson.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that made a huge difference in Jack's career. And he once was responsible for a chemical plant that blew up at GE and literally the roof blew off. He thought he was going to be fired, but he wasn't. He did things like complain about his compensation because he was concerned that he thought he was doing this great job and he was getting the paid the same as the other people he had started with and he didn't like that. So even a year after he started he threatened to quit and was literally given a going away party. And then one of his person who became his rabbi had detected by then his talent and convinced him to stay paid him more. And, you know, this guy became, his rabbi, he sort of circumvented the guy who paid him the same as other people. And Jack really began to differentiate himself.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Potentially a huge business, and it was Jack's job to figure out how to commercialize that. And, of course, he did it fabulously.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which paid him a little bit more, so that's why he decided to take it. And he moved to Pittsfield to basically try to figure out how to commercialize GE's plastic pellets business. GE had created these plastic pellets and, you know, how do we make these useful to American industry and industry all around the world?”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not inconceivable, but I doubt it because I probably would have been. You know, too young to have taken the train by myself. But, you know, that idea. And then Jack was actually a bit of an athlete, even though he was small, and he also stuttered. He had a stutter, and his mother got him over through, his mother was his greatest champion. He got him through the stuttering, got him thinking made him seem like he was 10 feet tall and a huge athlete, even though he really wasn't any of those things, but he was athletic and he was on high school teams. And then he went to UMass in Amherst, Massachusetts. And then from there, got a PSPHD in chemical engineering at the University of Illinois and got offered a number of jobs back then, including at Exxon and other places. GE, he was offered a job at GE.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, he was an only child, and his mother was a stay-at-home mom. He grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, and his father was like a conductor or a on a train, not in a train, right, on the train that went from Boston to the North Shore, which was a train that I grew up taking all the time to.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pulling off into the grass. And I'm thinking, well, okay, if I perish right now, at least my obit will say. That I was driving in a car driven by Jack Welsh to former CEO of GE.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The two tires on the sets of tires on either side of the center of the car were straddling the yellow double yellow line. And of course, cars coming the other direction were freaking out.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Won't put the seatbelt on, and it's dinging, dinging like it is. And I said, Jack, put your seatbelt. Why not put your seatbelt on, Jack? At least to stop the dinghy. Yeah, I don't like those things. So he decides he's not going to put his seatbelt on. So he sits on the seatbelt. The dinging is going the whole way And he drives, you know, there's a long driveway out of the golf club, and we finally get to what his milestone road, the long road between the town and Nantucket and Sconcett, where we both live. And he took a left to go back down to the village of Sconset. And instead of driving on the right side of the road, like we do in America, Decided to drive literally in the middle of the road”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's 80 or something at this point. And I'm thinking, you know, when he wasn't in the greatest health, his mind was all there, but physically he had started to deteriorate. And I was wondering, how is he going to hop up and be in the driver's seat, let alone drive? He scrambles right up there, but sits on the seatbelt.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most valuable company in the world. And so I get in and I put my seatbelt on. And Jack had either a walker or a cane at that point.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The drive, the steering wheel around town. And he had this, you know, it was not a late model convertible. It was sort of an older-ish but not really old version. So anyway, I was thinking that's what we were going to drive home in, but it turned out it was his Grand Cherokee. One thing that they sort of do with the club, which was quaint, is they bring the car around and they open both doors facing out and they turn it on. So all you have to do is hop in and drive off. You're some person out of a James Bond movie or something.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Convertible, right? So the top down. That's right. Right. And so you could always see this sort of like, you know, Mr. Magoo type character because he was a little fellow. So sort of his white baseball cap's sort of sticking above.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have our lunch and we have our first interview. And my wife had dropped me off there because she wanted to take our car. We had one car. And she wanted to take the car to go around and do things. And so Jack was going to drive me home because he lived near me. So we have the lunch. And usually I would see Jack around Nantucket driving his Mercedes coupe.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Straight from the gut. Straight from the gut. And as part of the publicity that got picked up again in October 2001, the woman who was the editor of Harvard Business Review, a woman by the name of Susie Wetlauver, Was the editor of the Harvard Business Review, had been a former journalist, Harvard Business School graduate, interviewed Jack, came to New York to interview Jack. They had lunch at the 21 Club, which I think no longer exists, and then pretty much soon after that they became, shall we say, an item. And next thing you know, Jack was divorcing his second wife and marrying Susie, who was leaving her husband and her three kids to be with Jack. And then they wrote the two of them, had a column in Business Week together, wrote books together.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, so then this book comes out, and there's a woman named, he's married. This book comes out on September 11th, 2001, but because of the events of that day. It was still a bestseller, but the publicity disappeared, and they didn't pick up the publicity again until October. So, as part of the publicity that got picked up in October of 2001, by the way, a book was a big bestsell”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, the co author on that book was a former fortune and business week reporter, John Byrne. I'm pretty sure John Byrne and Jack Welch were not did not get married. Now there's anything wrong with that. Didn't write a book.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. His memoir came out literally on September 11th, 2001. In fact, he had been on the Today Show that morning and had finished his segment about his book.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was not afraid, and he had messed up the succession process. He had messed up the selection of Jeff Immalt, which basically, who was his handpicked successor, and he felt, you know, by 2018, Jeff, of course, had been fired. He had been fired a year earlier. John Flannery was the new CEO now I had worked with John Flannery. John Flannery and I had started at Gapital together and shared an office together so I knew John for thirty years and it was great that John was the new CEO. The first thing out of Jack's mouth is how he had messed up the process and I'm thinking to myself, whoa. Jack Welch is telling me that the person he had hand selected as his successor he was completely disavowing and like saying I messed this up completely but I said Jack you chose him Yes, I know but I screwed it up”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first thing out of Jack Welch, as I tell the story out of his mouth, was that he had messed up, he didn't use messed up, but he used something.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Happens in Massachusetts, right? So the professional golfers were in and around Massachusetts and Phil Michelson Lefty was doing a practice round at the Nantucket Golf Club the day before the tournament started. So he was there having lunch and he was seated at a table with Bob Diamond who had been the CEO of Barclays and I think had been defenestrated by then he was with Paul Salem who I knew from growing up in central Massachusetts and Paul was one of the founders of a private equity firm Providence Equity Partners and so they were having lunch and one after another they came over and paid their respects to Jack. Everybody was always paying their respects to Jack. And this was no different. And so, and I knew Bob, and I knew Paul, so they're probably wondering what the hell is Bill Cohen doing sitting and having lunch with Jack Welch.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So when I walked into the Nantucket golf club and told him I was meeting Jack Welch, of course, it was like I was meeting royalty. And so we go out. I love this story. We go out onto the veranda, which was the porch for lunch. And he was already seated there. And at the next table, there was Phil Nicholson. It was a Wednesday, okay? And the Thursday was when this, like I think the Deutsche Bank golf tournament, the annual Deutsche Bank golf tournament.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was a pip squeak way down the food chain. And I think over time, over the years, he became aware of who I was writing the book. And when I reached out to him, he surprised me by saying, yeah, let's have a meeting. Let's meet at the Nantucket Golf Club, which, you know, was where he was a member. And we met. I love him.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly and time on the press. I think I actually started it in October of 2018. One thing I did was, you know, I figured if Jack weren't going to talk to me, then I would have to think about whether I wanted to do it. But I had a home in Nantucket. I was there. He had a home around the corner for me in Nantucket. I would see him occasionally. Did you know?”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it was easy for me, but we're talking about paper supply and printing time on the printer and things like that really got bogged down. And not just for my book, but a lot of books.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, it took me probably two and a half years to write it and research it and then another 15 months to get it published. Getting a book published in the middle of a pandemic is not that easy. See, I would think.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the first he did was divest it. So Jack divests, you know, so that's not unsurprising that the new CEO wants to undo Jeff Immold wanted to undack GE. Jack wanted to make changes to the way Reg Jones ran GE. I think it was under Jack really that GE was just buying and selling so many companies all the time. They were really an M&A machine. And they hired this guy, Mike Carpenter, from McKinsey to be the M&A guy. Just create a strategic planning department just to do deals.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, yes. I mean, GE kind of ended up, for whatever reason, doing some of the largest M&A deals up to that point. Jack's predecessor, Greg Jones, bought something called Utah International, which was like a mining company of all things, because he decided that owning commodities. would be a good hedge against 1970s inflation. So that was like a two and a half billion dollar deal. That was, again, Utah International. That was the largest M&A deal up to that point prior to RCA. That's right, right. Which Jack had done a decade later. And of course, when Jack became the CEO in 1980, he hated the Utah International Deal. He was against it, but nobody listened to him.”
2023-02-03 · Masters in Business · William D. Cohan on the Rise and Fall of GE · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source