Boardroom Talk: Advice to his well-heeled fellows how NOT to raise children from late Jack Welch

A good friend who knows the place well, tells me Stellenbosch University hosts a local version of the infamous Eurotrash – idle offspring of the super-rich whose distinguishing characteristic is how they flash cash. He was appalled at frequent exhibitions of their extravagance at well-heeled local restaurants in the town. Hopefully the kids tip well.

Funders of these spendthrift youngsters may well learn something from William Cohan's new book Power Failure which is about the late former General Electric CEO Jack Welch. It is the subject of an excellent review in a recent edition of The New Yorker, which asks whether the once vaunted executive was the greatest CEO of his era – or the worst.

More to our point, Cohan's book shares some interesting fathering advice from Welch. The article reads: "In all of our many discussions, the only time he spoke about his children was when he told me that he 'loved them to pieces' but that he had made 'a mistake' when he gave each of them a bunch of GE stock when he first became CEO." Because the stock had performed well, they each had something like $50m in company shares.

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