GE Missed Chance to Buy Apple for $2 Billion

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There was a one-time opportunity GE’s former boss Jack Welch missed: to buy Apple for a mere $2 billion. The nugget was uncovered by Bob Wright, the retired 72-year-old TV NBCUniversal executive in his 464-page memoirs, “The Wright Stuff.”

Speaking with the New York Post, Wright explains that the opportunity was there in 1996 at a time when Apple was struggling and the technology company’s then CEO Michael Spindler was begging GE to buy the company.

“The stock price was $20, and [Spindler] was explaining he couldn’t get the company moving fast enough and the analysts were on his case,” Wright told The Post in an interview on Tuesday. “He was sweating like mad and everybody said, ‘We can’t manage technology like that.’ We had a chance to buy it for $2 billion.”

The rest is history: Steve Jobs returned to Apple, which has since become the world’s biggest tech company and is valued at more than $600 billion, while GE stood at $296 billion at Wednesday’s market close.

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