Neutron Jack will be leaving GE – not with a bang but a whimper.
General Electric Chairman Jack Welch has finally coughed up a date for his retirement.
The 65-year-old said yesterday he will bow out at the company’s Sept. 7 board meeting – just in time to promote his new book, which comes out the same month.
Welch has a $7.1 million advance to write a book about business management.
After one of the most brilliant careers in business history, he leaves with slumping revenues – for the first time since he became chairman – and a scuppered mega deal. Welch previously said he’d be gone in April of this year but extended his time at the top of the world’s biggest company by market value to work on the $41 billion merger of GE and Honeywell International.
That deal was finally nixed by Mario Monti and the European Union antitrust regulators.
GE announced a 15 percent gain in second-quarter earnings to $3.9 billion, meeting analysts’ expectations.
However, revenues were down.
Revenue fell 3 percent to $31.9 billion. GE said it was down because the company exited some businesses while others were downsized.
Excluding those contractions, revenue would be up 6 percent, GE spokesman Gary Sheffer said.
The conglomerate has diverse interests, including manufacturing jet engines and medical equipment and owning the NBC television network, but the big earners were money and power: GE Capital Services’ second-quarter profits rose 16 percent, to $1.5 billion, while Power Systems reported profits of $1.22 billion, up 63 percent from $752 million.
GE shares closed at $47.00, up $2.39, or 5.36 percent.