Abstract

IS GE MIGHTIER THAN THE HUDSON?

Jack Welch is the darling of American capitalism; an Irish kid up from Salem, Massachusetts, who with salty tongue and a take-no-prisoners ferocity toppled the staid bureaucracy of the General Electric Co. As its CEO since 1981, he has engineered more than 600 acquisitions and increased General Electric's market value from some $13 billion to more than $550 billion. The Financial times has decreed General Electric the world's most respected company; Fortune anointed Welch the greatest manager of the twentieth century; to Talk magazine he is simply a legend. All this confetti tends to obscure the fact that for twenty-five years Welch has worked overtime to dodge GE's responsibility for cleaning up the upper Hudson River, New York and New Jersey, the biggest toxic site on the Superfund list of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.