Jack Welch was talking about company acquisitions when he made this comment, but the words may apply equally well to his personal life. The Suzy Wetlaufer story began October 11, 2001, when Suzy, editor of the Harvard Business Review, met with recently retired Welch to do an interview for an article. Said Jack:

Suzy agreed that when they replayed the tape, the electricity between them was obvious. That, no doubt, is the reason the special date is engraved on her wedding band.

Suzy wrote the Harvard Business Review (HBR) article, submitted it, and then went to New York for a photo shoot with Welch. That day, they met at the 21 Club for lunch—a very long lunch—and then again for dinner.

Clearly, the stars were in proper alignment for romance. Suzy was just a year away from her divorce; and Jack had retired a month earlier from GE, following the disappointment of the failed Honeywell merger. From information that came out later in his divorce, things were not going well in his marriage to Jane. The romance with Suzy went very fast. Suzy told Charlie Rose that she knew right away that Jack, two dozen years her senior, was right for her: "It was like I'd met this person I'd been waiting for my whole life."^[502]

The relationship may have been clandestine at first, but it wasn't a secret for long. Jack's wife, Jane Welch, apparently overheard the two talking on the phone; and when she checked his Blackberry, she discovered an intimate e-mail exchange between Jack and Suzy, her first clue that there was another woman in his life. She called Suzy at work the day after Christmas 2001 and questioned her about the ethics of publishing a story about the man with whom a journalist is having an affair. Would that not color the writer's objectivity? The next day Suzy told her superiors about the relationship and withdrew the story.

Suzy cancelled the story but did not resign her $277,000-a-year position as editor. Suzy soon became an "editor at large"; but the conflict was escalating, and she was asked not to come to the office. By March, the relationship was splashed everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to the Daily News.

The situation soon moved to crisis level for HBR, one of the most respected business publications in the world. Staffers were outraged that by becoming romantically involved with the subject of a story and not revealing the fact until forced to do so, Suzy flew in the face of journalism ethics. The breach was unacceptable to them; two senior editors submitted their resignations in protest.

The conflict was complicated by the fact that HBR ultimately was under the control of Harvard Business School's then dean James Cash, whom Welch had appointed to GE's board of directors. Cash has since retired from Harvard but remains on the GE board. Also, Steve Kerr, who was GE's chief learning officer under Welch, is a member of the board of directors of Harvard Business School Publishing.

Suzy's sister and best friend, Della Cushing, seemed particularly unconcerned about her sister's integrity. "She fell in love. What's the big deal?" Della asked. "Everything they [the HBR staff] used to love her for, now they hate her for. I think she should start a new magazine called Jack."^[503]

Jack encouraged Suzy to hang in and keep going to work, insisting that the staff 's anger would blow over. He felt that based on her excellent job appraisals, she would be given a second chance. The editor in chief seemed inclined to forgive the breach, but the staff wouldn't have it. Finally, Jack hired a Boston lawyer who'd worked for GE, Bob Popeo, to help Suzy negotiate a departure package.

Both Jack and Suzy expressed regret about not going public with their relationship sooner and more openly. They both say they wished she'd resigned immediately.

The worst part of the experience, said Suzy, was trying to explain the situation to her children and not being able to protect them from aggressive photographers. And then there was "the disconnect of what you'd read about and what our day-to-day experience was," said Suzy, "not that there weren't dreadful times. But . . . during that time, Jack and I were falling in love and building our new life together. There was great joy."^[504]

Despite the trauma, Suzy had no doubts. She said she knew it was working; otherwise she wouldn't have gone through it. She never thought of ending the affair: "We were grown-ups, we weren't kids, this wasn't a crush. . . . These were two people whose lives were now changed," said Suzy. "I should have quit the next day. That was my mistake."^[505]

Suzanne Rebekah Spring Wetlaufer is a "mega-achiever" with impeccable credentials. She was born in Portland, Oregon, as her architect father was moving around the country building his career. Her mother was a Ph.D. teacher and school administrator. The Spring children were well educated, thanks partly to a grandfather who made a fortune in real estate. Suzy attended the exclusive New England Philips Exeter Academy and then studied journalism at Harvard. She played in the band, was captain of the squash team, and worked on the Harvard Crimson. Fellow classmates described her as popular, even as a big shot with a "good eye for the cute guys."^[506] After stints as an intern at the Washington Post, a reporter at the Miami Herald and Associated Press, and as a novelist, she went back to Harvard for an MBA. She became a writer at the Harvard Business Review and, four years later, its editor. Said Jack:

Suzy's smart and also complicated. As she was building her career, she married and had four children with Eric Wetlaufer, a money manager she first met when they were students at Philips Exeter. Suzy taught Sunday school and attended Bible study courses; but she also has a flair for personal drama and a taste for French manicures, designer clothes, and pricey restaurants. Following her divorce from Wetlaufer in 2000, there were stories of flings with a 24-year-old intern at HBR and with Ford Motor Company chief executive officer Jacques Nasser, whom she met during an HBR interview. Nasser denies having an affair with Suzy.

One thing is for sure. Once she and Jack fell in love, Suzy threw her intellect and energy into becoming a close and involved partner in his post–GE identity and new life.

If Jack and Suzy's timing was off, Jane Welch's timing was superb. The prenuptial agreement she and Jack signed at the time of their marriage had expired in 1999, giving her deep access to his billion-dollar-plus fortune.

Jane may have hailed from little Pratt Station, Alabama; but she had been a corporate lawyer. She rejected Jack's list of suggested divorce counsel. Instead, she hired William Zabel, a lawyer in New York who had represented many celebrities, including financier George Soros and novelist Michael Crichton. Angered and afraid that she would file in New York where laws were more to her advantage, Jack jumped ahead, waiting at home one evening to personally serve her with divorce papers.

She fired back, this time revealing a list of sumptuous postretirement perks Welch was receiving from GE. In addition to his $86,000-a-year fee as a GE consultant, the perks included, among other things, cell phones, cable TV services, flowers, security systems, vitamins, charge accounts at pricey restaurants, an apartment overlooking New York's Central Park, and liberal use of a GE corporate jet.

Jack was irate that Jane sneered at the $35,000-a-month alimony he offered. After all, she was a second wife of only 13 years. No children were involved; and, by Jack's reckoning, she had the perfect life. But his own words worked against him. In his autobiography, Jack: Straight from the Gut (Warner, 2001), he described her as bright, tough, and witty. She gave up her job at a major New York law firm to marry him; she accompanied him on business trips; she learned to play golf so they could spend more time together; and she literally saved his life when he suffered a heart attack: "She's become the perfect partner," he wrote.^[508] And in the book's acknowledgments, he stated:

After Jane spilled the beans about Jack's perks, he circulated the story that Jane had had an affair a year earlier with an Italian bodyguard. Finally, sanity took hold, and the Welches reached an out-of-court settlement just days before the embarrassingly public trial was to begin. It was reported that Jane Welch received a divorce settlement of around $180 million.

Investors and the business world were aghast when they learned about Welch's postretirement side benefits. There had always been questions about Welch's compensation when he was GE CEO. Was his retirement pay egregious, or was it his just due for the outstanding value he'd brought to the company?

At the very least, investors thought GE should have disclosed the terms of the agreement with Welch. It would be incorrect to say that GE kept Welch's retirement package a secret; it is more accurate to say the company was vague on the details.

Jack defended his benefits, saying that after his open heart surgery in 1995, the board asked him to stay on the job until 2000. They offered him a generous pay package to do so. He asked instead to maintain his lifestyle, specifically his perks, after retirement. . . .

Welch continued to use the Trump Tower apartment and the corporate jet, but he now pays GE $2 million a year for their use.

Jack, 68, and Suzy, 44, rented a 20,000-square-foot brownstone on Boston's prestigious Beacon Hill, moved in together, and were married in 2004, nearly three years after the fateful interview.

The wedding, a gala celebration with 92 guests, including Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose, was covered by People magazine. The couple held a mock wedding for her children (ages 9 through 15), who were considered too young to attend the real event. Suzy showed up at the rehearsal dinner decked out in a wedding dress and veil.

Jack describes the feeling of being in love and starting a new life like having "the world by the ass."^[511]

In his previous two marriages, Jack worked obsessively and, in much of his spare time, played golf. He and Suzy still maintain a harried schedule, but it's different now. They spent almost every day together, working on books, writing magazine and newspaper columns, traveling on the speaking circuit, doing family things, and just having a "wacky" time. She is an executive in residence at Babson College, where she teaches classes on leadership. Jack teaches at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When they must spend the night apart, they talk on the phone for hours and both say they have trouble sleeping. They are news junkies and claim to agree on almost everything, from business principles to politics. Surely there are issues on which Suzy and Jack disagree. Yes, says Suzy: "Chinese food. Truly, we are very similar."^[512]

While some may speculate that the dynamic of the relationship seems odd, some of his friends are happy that Jack is happy. "I hope Jack never wakes up," said one friend. Andrew Lack, a friend and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment, says, "I think they will be deeply in love with each other, as the saying goes, as long as they both shall live. I don't have any doubt about that."^[513]

Krypton Jack didn't seem so invincible after the Suzy Wetlaufer episode. But the setbacks proved to be only temporary. Jack Welch, famous for reinventing a venerable corporation well before problems developed, now went to work reinventing himself.

He has become one of the most sought-after speakers, consultants, writers, and business thinkers of the day. Welch, explains the International Herald Tribune, has made himself into an independent brand: "[I]f Jack Welch LLC, the name of his consulting firm, were a stock, it would be hitting a record high."

Welch maintains the bountiful energy and drive he used to build GE into the industrial/financial powerhouse it is today. It is estimated that he now earns more than $10 million each year, much of it coming from current income. Welch is: