Word: welches
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...evening of Wednesday, June 13, Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, retreated to his room at the Conrad Hilton hotel in Brussels and wrestled with an unfamiliar feeling--one of impending defeat. Just eight months before, he had, it seemed, pulled off a stunning coup. Welch had always coveted Honeywell International, whose business making advanced electronics for the aviation industry, he thought, made a perfect fit with GE, one of three leading global manufacturers of airplane engines. In October 2000, during a visit to the New York Stock Exchange, he had learned that United Technologies Corp.--whose Pratt & Whitney division...
...European capital, his last big deal was falling apart. On that day in June, Welch had met twice with Mario Monti, the European Union's Commissioner for Competition. Monti believed that the combination of Honeywell's cockpit controls with GE's engines and powerful aircraft financing division would stifle competition. In other words, he viewed with suspicion precisely those synergies that, for Welch, made the deal so attractive. Monti would approve the merger only if Welch made the kind of concessions that, from GE's standpoint, wrecked its whole point. The next morning Monti called Welch once more, to discuss...
...Welch placed a call to Andrew Card, chief of staff to President Bush, who was about to sit down with European leaders in Goteborg, Sweden. As the GE boss recounted the conversation to TIME, he told Card that he would appreciate "whatever help you can give us." In the formal meetings in Sweden, GE never came up. But on June 15, in Warsaw, Bush said he was "concerned" that the Europeans had rejected the merger. Monti was furious--not with Bush, he told TIME, but with those who had sought the President's help. Three days later Monti said...
...months, nobody thought he would. After Welch stole Honeywell from United Technologies, he said: "This is the cleanest deal you'll ever see." Honeywell and GE were both industrial conglomerates, but their product lines had few overlaps. A combined company, however, would be a powerful force. So United Technologies, Rolls-Royce of Britain--the third of the trio that dominates jet engines--and other businesses were determined to stop the deal...
...arrival of a new head--Charles James, Bush's nominee, who was considered to be probusiness. "The DOJ would not and did not meet with us," says John Briggs, who represented Rockwell, an American competitor of Honeywell. "There was just no real constituency for taking on Jack Welch without political leadership in place...