General Electric Company

"More than anything else, Weinstock came to admire Scott’s skills as a valuer of property and businesses. He had an instinct for making quick valuations which rarely let him down, whereas it would take Weinstock, equipped with all the tools of the trade, including valuation tables and plans, far longer. Observing Scott’s business techniques, like the other skills Weinstock had picked up from mentors at school and in the Admiralty, was an essential part of the learning process for a business career which would soon advance rapidly. Within a decade Louis Scott would be assigned by his former assistant, now managing director of one of Britain’s biggest manufacturers, to handle the General Electric Company’s property needs."

"In the end the unlikely partner was the General Electric Company (GEC). Unlikely because GEC was a giant by comparison with Radio & Allied, whose 1960 sales were only about 5 per cent of GEC’s £117 million. Indeed, the £9 million increase in GEC’s sales in 1960 was more than R&A’s total. GEC’s diverse interests ranged from wholesaling electrical products in the UK to nuclear power stations in Japan. The consumer products business was far outweighed in importance by heavy engineering, telecommunications and electronics. GEC was a vast international empire, but it had been struggling with poor performance and mounting debts, and a group of key directors had concluded that its main problem was a lack of quality management. They were looking for a top manager, and believed they had found him in Arnold Weinstock."

"Prodigy was an early player looking to connect personal computers on a private subscriber network. Prodigy’s owners were IBM and Sears. IBM, the largest computer maker in the world at the time, and Sears, one of the biggest retailers, were offering news, sports, weather, entertainment, and home shopping through Sears and other retailers. Members could “message” one another only on the proprietary, closed Prodigy network. The biggest of these new networking services was AOL, followed closely by CompuServe, owned by H&R Block Inc. and General Electric Company. They were all clunky, closed-off networks or “walled gardens.” Simple connections took a few minutes and required special software and modems, and some services charged per minute for usage!"