I agree with your statement that just focusing on the numbers will not allow us to do a realistic assessment of most businesses. However, and unfortunately, tha

I agree with your statement that just focusing on the numbers will not allow us to do a realistic assessment of most businesses. However, and unfortunately, that is the yardstick used the most often. In fact, one of the criticisms about Welch is his strategy to use legal but questionable accounting techniques to make GE look better than it was. Based on the publicly available information about Boeing, Dave definitely didn't leave the company that is significantly better off. The stock price is much lower than when he took over and there have been major write-offs on the 777x program. To be fair to the man, some of these issues can also be attributed to the COVID pandemic, the Ukraine war, etc.