Breakups Usher In a New Era of Corporate Conglomerates
Gas turbine parts at the General Electric Co. (GE) energy plant in Greenville, South Carolina.
Photographer: Luke Sharrett/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Conglomerates are dead. Long live conglomerates.
General Electric Co., Johnson & Johnson and Japan’s Toshiba Corp.’s breakups this week may have signaled to many the last gasp of a bigger-is-better ethos that’s been losing favor for decades. Activists and corporate governance advocates cheered in what seemed to have marked the end of an era placing blind faith in an almighty CEO overseeing an opaque web of unrelated businesses.