Lawrence A. Bossidy, who as an acolyte of Jack Welch, the famed chief executive of General Electric, took over the reins of a struggling industrial conglomerate called Allied Signal in 1991 and transformed it into one of the great corporate success stories of the 1990s, died on July 22 at his home in Ridgefield, Conn. He was 90.
His daughter Lynn Tidgwell said the cause was a heart attack.
A former star high school pitcher who passed on a shot at the major leagues in favor of a college education, Mr. Bossidy spent 34 years climbing the ranks at General Electric, eventually becoming one of two vice chairmen under Mr. Welch.
But he longed to be a chief executive, and in 1991 he got his chance. Allied Signal was a gawky, underperforming amalgam of disparate corporate entities, making everything from car brakes to carpet fibers. In 1991, the year he took over, it reported an operating loss of $273 million.
Within three months, Mr. Bossidy presented a comprehensive restructuring plan. He cut thousands of jobs, closed several plants and sold off underperforming divisions. In that respect, he was borrowing from Mr. Welch’s dictum of ruthlessly cutting a company to its core functions.
But he differed from his friend and mentor in other ways. He largely eschewed public attention, and never aspired to Mr. Welch’s name recognition — one reason Chief Executive magazine called him “the CEO’s CEO.” He was often indifferent to his appearance. He instituted a corporate newsletter and regular meetings with rank-and-file workers, with no other executives present.
No detail was too small for Mr. Bossidy: He even ordered the removal of the hyphen in the company’s name, to show that its two main corporate ancestors, Allied Corp. and the Signal Companies, were now one entity.
The plan worked. In the midst of an economy still climbing out of recession, he led the company to an operating income of $535 million in 1992 (the equivalent of about $1.2 billion today). Under his leadership, the company went from a market capitalization of $4 billion in 1991 to $25 billion in 1999.
“Larry is a quick thinker, who energizes others around him. When he gets behind an idea, he lights up a room,” Mr. Welch told Chief Executive in 2010. “He has both the mental toughness as well as the broad perspective that is necessary to lead and deliver results.”
Lawrence Arthur Bossidy was born on March 5, 1935, in Pittsfield, Mass. His father, also named Lawrence, owned a shoe store, and his mother, Gertrude (Quinn) Bossidy, was a journalist.
Mr. Bossidy was coveted by the Detroit Tigers in 1953. But when a team representative arrived at the Bossidy home with a contract, Mrs. Bossidy refused to let him in, saying her son had to go to college first.
He attended Colgate University, in upstate New York, on a full athletic scholarship, and in 1955 led the team to the College World Series. He graduated with a degree in economics in 1955.
He married Nancy Jo Rodhouse in 1956. She died in 2023. Along with Ms. Tidgwell, he is survived by five other daughters, Nancy Dugdale, Mary Jane Kelemen, Lucy Milliano, Kathleen Mackie and Pam Martin; three sons Paul, Larry Jr. and Mike Bossidy; 29 grandchildren; and 16 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Bossidy joined General Electric immediately after graduating and entered its famed financial training program in 1957.
He first met Mr. Welch in the late 1960s, when he was assigned to perform an audit of the company’s plastics division, which Mr. Welch was running. The two became close friends, with regular golf outings and vacations together on Nantucket.
Mr. Welch brought Mr. Bossidy with him when he became chief executive in 1981, installing him as vice chairman and effectively as his No. 2.
Through the 1980s, Mr. Bossidy put in place Mr. Welch’s strategy of broadening General Electric into financial services. In 1986, he helped lead the purchase of the investment bank Kidder, Peabody & Company.
Almost immediately, scandal arose around the bank’s links to insider-trading allegations. Mr. Bossidy worked quickly behind the scenes, replacing its leadership with loyal lieutenants and reaching a $25 million settlement with the Department of Justice.
In the ensuing months, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York at the time, secured a raft of indictments for insider trading charges, tarnishing many Wall Street firms; thanks to Mr. Bossidy, General Electric emerged unscathed.
Mr. Bossidy was too close in age to Mr. Welch to be considered a potential successor to him, so when the chance to lead Allied Signal came up, he jumped at it.
He retired in 1999, having taken the company through a successful merger with Honeywell that year. But he returned briefly in 2000 after the merged entity, which took the Honeywell name, fired his successor, Michael Bonsignore.
He retired for good in 2002.
Later that year Mr. Bossidy published “Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.” Written with the business consultant Ram Charan and the journalist Charles Burck, it eventually sold more than two million copies, climbing high on the list of hardcover business best sellers in The New York Times.
In it, Mr. Bossidy outlined his theories of management, including his approach to hiring managers:
“If you have to choose between someone with a staggering I.Q. and an elite education who’s gliding along, and someone with a lower I.Q. but who is absolutely determined to succeed, you’ll always do better with the second person.”
Clay Risen is a Times reporter on the Obituaries desk.
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