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Talk of the bay

Former GE exec Welch lets his opinions be known

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published May 30, 2005

Jack Welch may have left the top job at General Electric, but the candid management guru has hardly gone quietly into that good night called retirement.

Welch, who's peddling his second book, delivered more of his "from the gut" opinions during last week's International Council of Shopping Centers convention in Las Vegas.

Welch on President Bush's attempts to begin switching some of Social Security to private investment accounts by staging town meetings where he made his case to handpicked audience members: "I supported private accounts, but the president booted it. You don't get people to switch by trying to talk them into it. Where's the leadership?"

On the tendency of CEOs to fall for investment banker-induced, you-just-have-to-have-this-company deal heat: "MCI went bankrupt. But the deal guys have created a bidding war between Verizon and Qwest (for some of the pieces.) If that dog didn't hunt at $6-billion, why is it now going to work at $9-billion?"

On Newsweek's PR handling of the recent Koran-in-the-toilet retraction: ""Newsweek acted quickly, but it was the rest of the media ganging up on the White House that truly got them out of it."

On why, in light of critics' accusations of TV network news bias, Welch - whose company kept The McLaughlin Group on PBS for years - never tried to meddle in NBC News once GE bought it from RCA: "Owning a TV network is a license to steal. . . . Trying to change NBC News would have been suicide for me because the rest of the media would have ganged up on me. Was that cowardly? Yes. But NBC News had a lot of positive cash flow. I wasn't about to touch it."

[Last modified May 27, 2005, 17:58:02]