Billionaire Ken Langone, one of the co-founders of Home Depot (HD) and a former General Electric (GE) board member, said bad decisions from the top led to GE’s fall from grace as one of the great American conglomerates.
“I think a bunch of people, including me, made a bad decision … giving Jeff Immelt the [CEO] job,” Langone told Yahoo Finance’s Jen Rogers. “I was on the committee. I was on the management development and compensation committee, where we approved [then-GE CEO Jack Welch’s] suggestion. We approved it enthusiastically. We made a bad mistake.”
Jack Welch was GE’s chairman and CEO from 1981 to 2001. Immelt succeeded Welch, following Welch’s retirement, steering the company through the Sept. 11 attacks and the financial crisis. Langone, who is worth about $3.5 billion, served on GE’s board from 1999 to 2005.
Langone added that issues at GE were caused by a lack of leadership that “manifested itself in horrible capital allocation, destruction of a culture that was unique in every respect.”