Key tweets, and it's all gone to Hell.

[JohnFSilver]

And then GE tried to get Boston to approve building a helipad at their new headquarters so their key executives could still live in the Gold Coast and frolic NYC, only to realize their building was right under Logan Airport's , which happens to be right under the flight path for Logan's 4L/22R, 4R/22L, and 9/27 runways. The FAA tanked that idea quick. The company then sold huge pieces to cover their debt load from GE Capital. More recently (2022), GE decided to split into 3 companies - GE Healthcare HQ'd in Chicago, GE Vernova HQ'd across the river in Cambridge, and GE Aerospace HQ'd outside of Cincinnati. As a result, the headcount at the their new (2019), now former headquarters, dropped to under 200 (was planned to house 800) resulting in a second proposed building getting the ax before GE sold it. GE reportedly spent $200 million on it, less $87 Million from the Commonwealth of Mass, which they may or may not have to pay back, and only netted $98 Million in its sale. That worked well for both.

Have a family member who works GE. The Boston move was an unmitigated disaster.

Immelt’s megacy was buy high and sell low. Lol.

The only business that is worth anything is aerospace. Healthcare is OK and power destroyed the company.

 

[JohnFSilver]

UCF also has like 50k students and is in a large population center in the 3rd most populous and fastest growing state in the country. It's an attractive addition.

Meh. Florida for recruiting and people. But UCF brand is crap.

You can’t ask for the 4th or 5th most important school in Florida or the 11th best school in Texas and assume that it is a good move.

I which ucf nothing but the best, but all the people who go to school there are gator fans .

 

[businesslawyer]

Lawsuit time?

Wait — they needed a study to determine that it is important to play in a P-however many league? Well, good for them.

 

[RSTuthill]

No, it's really hard to move one's headquarters successfully and too often its driven by the ego of a CEO instead of a sound business decision.

GE's move to Boston didn't work out well.

Mass also bragged about getting the HQ for the combined Raytheon/UTC merger in 2020 only for the 'new' RTC to move it's HQ to Arlington VA (DC) in 2022.

Bretolini was so mad that he received push-back trying to move Aetna's HQ to NYC (Chelsea) in 2018, which was near his home, to a more dynamic (and exponentially more expensive for most employees) environment than Hartford, he orchestrated Aetna’s sale to CVS and promptly retired (he’s now the CEO of Oscar Health, which is based in NYC).
My favorite was when Frissora moved Hertz's headquarters from the North Jersey suburbs to Florida (along with Thrifty, which Hertz just bought and was HQ'd in Tulsa) in 2012 citing lower taxes, tax incentives ($84 million from Florida) and key tourists markets in Orlando and Miami. So, it was shock to many when it was announced that it's new headquarters would be in Estero, which is a small town between Ft. Myers and Naples. Naples just happened to be where Frissora was already living in a luxury high-rise condo on the beach and 'commuting' to Jersey for work. For some reason, most of the senior leadership and mid-level management teams did not relocate with him and that loss was cited as a contributing factor to Hertz’s financial and operational issues that culminated in 2020 with a bankruptcy filing, which also wiped-out Florida’s investment.

I missed that memo about the RTX HQ having gone to Arlington, VA. What I have noticed, however, is that in the last five years a UTC helicopter has not overflown the NOFO on its way from the Hamptons to Hartford every Sunday night at dusk in the summer.

 

[Waquoit]

Have a family member who works GE. The Boston move was an unmitigated disaster.

Yet the CT haters bring it up whenever they can.

 

[CL82]

Have a family member who works GE. The Boston move was an unmitigated disaster.

How so?

 

[nelsonmuntz]

Have a family member who works GE. The Boston move was an unmitigated disaster.

Immelt’s megacy was buy high and sell low. Lol.

The only business that is worth anything is aerospace. Healthcare is OK and power destroyed the company.

Possibly the worst big company CEO in American history. 99% of people picked at random couldn’t have run GE into the ground like that if they had been trying as hard as they could. It takes a special talent to drive one of the most respected companies in the world right off a cliff.

 

[RSTuthill]

Have a family member who works GE. The Boston move was an unmitigated disaster.

Immelt’s megacy was buy high and sell low. Lol.

The only business that is worth anything is aerospace. Healthcare is OK and power destroyed the company.

So I worked at Power for ten years. For a good portion of that time Power was bigger than all of UTX. I would disagree on a flat comparison statement like that.

CAPITAL destroyed the company. And Immelt's purchase of Alstom was very foolhardy and compounded the problem. They wanted the Alstom steam business and PSM for anti-competitive reasons (to keep the price of the lucrative spare parts market high). The EU told them to divest PSM, and they overpaid for the rest. The Alstom large turbines were not money makers and and the smaller gas turbines had already been sold. So they overpaid by a factor of two right when the fossil fuel power market, which is cyclical, dropped precipitously.

Immelt actually saw some things and tried to fix them. But his major errors were ego driven.

 

[RSTuthill]

Possibly the worst big company CEO in American history. 99% of people picked at random couldn’t have run GE into the ground like that if they had been trying as hard as they could. It takes a special talent to drive one of the most respected companies in the world right off a cliff.

I disagree. Those people were VERY smart. They got away with managing their financial reporting for a couple decades using accounting loopholes. And it would not have come to light had Capital not crashed. That was world class manipulation.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

I disagree. Those people were VERY smart. They got away with managing their financial reporting for a couple decades using accounting loopholes. And it would not have come to light had Capital not crashed. That was world class manipulation.

It wasn’t fraud. Not even close. Immelt had a tantrum when the treasury asked GE to do a little extra reporting on their massive cash machine at Capital. Immelt basically gave the division away because he was having a sad.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

There was no fraud with GE and what happened with Capital played an enormous role in the company's demise but Immelt does warrant a huge amount of blame. Similar to what happened with our football program from immediately after RE left the first time until RE left the second time, an intentional effort to drive it into the ground would not have done a better job at destroying something than what occurred.

Capital's demise was mostly due to hubris but there were mitigating factors. There's an old Wall Street adage "don't confuse a bull market with sound investing". Capital was basically minting money for the ten year stretch that began shortly after Black Monday (October 1987) as that event led to many being far more diligent and discretionary in private investments and GE Capital was in a position to finance solid deals that many banks were unwilling or unable to get involved with. The environment was ripe for quality projects (especially in commercial real estate development) in need of capital. GE Capital did not need to do a lot of looking to find these potential deals and it took only a moderate amount of effort to determine if the prospects were favorable or unfavorable.

Once the internet bubble began (mid 1990's) they had become a bloated company. They had no issues adding a number of very high level employees as they felt this would allow for more deals, leading to more revenues, so the competition among much of their staff was no longer determining if deals were worth closing, but just in adding as many as possible (to justify their employment). They were involved with a tremendous number of bad deals (by the numbers prior to close) that were approved solely due to unrealistic projections, added to the financial models, solely to give the deals a passing grade.

It's sad what happened there but it was as obvious as knowing that once you move from December to January the year changes. I remember arguing with a few of their VP's (they would give almost anyone that title) about deals they bragged about closing that made no sense to me (my firm at that time among other things would help with due diligence on multiple matters. so I could see quickly if something was economically feasible). For the record, at that time my now ex was a GE Capital employee, as were a couple former coworkers from roughly a decade earlier. I knew quite a few of the players personally and had countless discussions over dinner parties, etc. about their recent deals.

 

[RSTuthill]

I would refer you to Can Gulen's writing on this, guys. And I did not use the word fraud.

 

[CoastAtlantic]

 

[CoastAtlantic]

 

[JeepCSC]

Stanford really putting the pressure on the ACC to pull the trigger. Right out of the Oregon playbook.

 

[uconnbaseball]

Rule #1

 

[bendm]

don’t understand why calford would rather be in the acc, whose biggest programs are trying to leave, getting a fraction of a share, and sending their Olympic sports 3000 miles across the country, than in the more stable big12 with up to 6 other former PAC schools and a better tv deal. And Don’t tell me it’s because they can associate with duke and uva.

 

[JeepCSC]

Would be hilarious if the Pac 10’s best offer was $23 m streaming, and the B10 takes Washington/Oregon, and the other 8 schools get $31m. That math ain’t mathing.

 

[metsfan2323]

don’t understand why calford would rather be in the acc, whose biggest programs are trying to leave, getting a fraction of a share, and sending their Olympic sports 3000 miles across the country, than in the more stable big12 with up to 6 other former PAC schools and a better tv deal. And Don’t tell me it’s because they can associate with duke and uva.

I agree, it makes zero sense, the B12 should be much more appealing to Cal/Stamford which tells me ESPN is manipulating the landscape.

 

[JeepCSC]

I can’t imagine a less likely pairing in American sports than Cal and BYU, unless it’s Stanford and BYU. I think Stanford would pull a Notre Dame before that ever happened.

 

[huskymedic]

 

[Forte]

So if this is credible, then doesn't that imply that Yormark completely lied about expanding East and it proves UConn was used with no intention of ever really inviting us?

And that they are out of money?

 

[HuskyDogArt]

how is it that we’re like the only school to win a national championship in basketball and reach a bowl game and still end up left at the table? I just don’t know what we do at this point. What else is there for us to prove?

If the ACC takes SMU, Stanford and Cal there’s legitimately no path left for a P5 invite until the 2030s.

Can someone explain to me what the heck we do?

Beat NC State next Saturday, then beat all of the other teams scheduled. Lets use the snub as motivation to beat all teams!!

 

[nadav]

I think it just shows that he isn’t making the final call, the schools are.

 

[UConnJim]

So if this is credible, then doesn't that imply that Yormark completely lied about expanding East and it proves UConn was used with no intention of ever really inviting us?

Yormack never thought the Pac 12 would totally collapse as the consensus was 10 Pac 12 schools would then add SDSU and SMU. Remember, SDSU basically gave notice to the MWC that they were going to leave so I think they thought they were going to the Pac 12. Once the Pac 12's media deal disappointed and Oregon and Washington got the Big 10 nod, everything changed. UConn was to be #14 with Colorado.