United Airlines CEO Goes Full Musk
Why the latest publicity stunt by United has plenty of potential to backfire
During the first dot-com boom, staid executives of traditional companies (you know: the sort that make profits) were furious about being sidelined in the mass media by much younger and brasher entrepreneurs who (on paper, at least) were suddenly worth more than the GDP of many small countries. Jack Welsch of GE famously told his minions to “get us some moolah” by acquiring a few dot-com properties that surely would boost GE into the stratosphere of inflated valuations. No CEO of a major US corporation willingly cedes the limelight, especially when their next bonus largely depends on perception rather than performance.
We all know what happened next: GE’s dot-com acquisitions wasted a great deal of shareholder equity and Welsch’s successor was left with a company that under the covers was in far worse shape than investors realized.
Fast-forward twenty years. The newly appointed CEO of United Airlines, which like all the majors has been devastated by the world’s rush to embrace coronapanic, is looking to establish himself firmly on the covers of Forbes, Inc., Fortune, and other top business magazines. The problem: how to shine when your company is on the ropes and reliant on billions of dollars of taxpayers’…
