What came out after Welch's retirement is that the company was really overvalued because of the growth of the financial sector. His rank and yank also highly o

What came out after Welch's retirement is that the company was really overvalued because of the growth of the financial sector. His rank and yank also highly optimized for the short term, and stock markets loved it. He may well have given rise to that whole corporate mindset - "quarterly profits over long term results", leading to debacles like their battle with the EPA (Welch hilariously argues that it was a witch hunt, and that PCBs are apparently just fine to go in the water supply).