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A Matter of Life and Jeff

Correcting the record on the decline and dismantling of GE—once the most valuable company in the world—under Jeff Immelt.

jeff immelt
Immelt is now a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he teaches a class called Systems Leadership about “leading through change,” and remains a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, where he invests in startups and backs promising entrepreneurs. Photo: Peter Foley/Bloomberg/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
June 22, 2025

It’s been a strange few years for GE, and for Jeff Immelt, its chief executive from 2001 to 2017. GE, of course, recently completed the process of splitting itself into three companies, after more than a decade of spinoffs and fire sales designed to pay off its stratospheric debts, course-correct after poorly timed deals and much capital misallocation, and resuscitate its flatlining stock. And Immelt—the executive who oversaw its decline from being the most valuable company in the world to getting booted from the Dow Jones Industrial Average—is now weirdly taking a victory lap.