Weinstock

"Each business then had to be introduced to the routine of annual budget meetings and monthly reporting which was to be the managing director’s key tool of control. The system was simple, appropriate to Weinstock’s small-business background, the lack of financial sophistication among GEC’s managers, his horror of bureaucracy and the wide spread of businesses within the GEC group. Weinstock wanted managers to make their own decisions and to stand or fall by them. Responsibility for results meant an end to the usual rosy forecasts. Every manager now knew that if he failed to meet his budget, he would be in trouble, and possibly out on his ear."

"_The early days also illustrated Weinstock’s aversion to overwork, which continued throughout his career. He had become interested in horse-racing through his father-in-law Michael Sobell, and despite his alertness to any suggestion of slacking by the company’s staff, he and Kenneth Bond would spend occasional afternoons at the races when everything was running smoothly and one of his horses was running at Windsor or Kempton Park."

"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."

"Weinstock is a very private figure, and little light has ever been shed on how he reached the top of British industry, why he remained there, and what motivated him. Our first step was to approach him to seek his cooperation, although there was never any intention that this should be an ‘authorised’ biography. His response was polite but firm: he would do nothing to stand in our way, but while he remained managing director of GEC, that was his priority. He was not prepared to spend company time talking to us, even though he was keen to give a wider airing to his views on industrial policy and the mess which governments had made of it."

"Weinstock was happy for R&A to continue as a private company, but he recognised the urgent need to diversify away from televisions before the bubble burst. By 1957 there were twenty-nine competitors making televisions, but demand was bound to peak soon. On top of that, televisions were greatly affected by the government's techniques for controlling consumer spending, the main weapons of which were hire-purchase controls and varying the rate of purchase tax (the forerunner of VAT). Diversification would be easier if R&A had a stock market quotation, which would allow it to issue shares to buy companies rather than paying in cash. Michael Sobell insisted on going for a stock market flotation as soon as R&A had achieved the minimum three-year financial record required by the stock exchange. It reached that stage in 1958, a good time to come to the stock market: business was still booming, and optimism was growing as the economy accelerated in what the 1957 Chancellor Peter Thorneycroft described as ‘controlled expansion’."

"But it was the small things which hurt most. With his usual eye for detail, Weinstock carried a cost-cutting regime to extremes, cancelling the orders for the directors’ newspapers and magazines — in Lindley’s case, the Financial Times and Yachting and Motor Boat Weekly. Curiously, this was the one move which really rankled with Lindley, who accosted Weinstock one morning, saying: ‘You stopped me getting them.’ Weinstock said: ‘No, I stopped the company paying for it.’ That was the end of Lindley. In November 1963 Weinstock cemented his position by bringing in David Lewis, Sobell’s lawyer, who had advised on both family and commercial matters. Lewis was just as bright and hard as Weinstock, several years his senior, and, as a colleague put it, ‘101 per cent straight’."

"The Plan recognised the ‘key importance’ of the electrical engineering industry in achieving balance of payments and investment objectives. Exports of electrical engineering products were forecast to grow by 6 per cent a year, but that required international standardisation, something Weinstock and others would be calling for years later in relation to telecommunications equipment. Exports of electronics were seen as even more promising, with growth of 10 per cent a year predicted. But the Plan noted that the sector’s performance was dependent on the ordering programme of the Post Office (then in charge of what is now British Telecom)."

"What Weinstock, Lewis and Bond wanted most of all was accountability — for every manager to know exactly what he was responsible for. There were no more fat consultancy fees from GEC. Weinstock and Bond spread their message of control and accountability through the empire. Amorphous divisions were broken up into distinct units with specific products so that individuals could be given clear responsibility for smaller operations. ‘The first thing we did was to make sure that each business ran a product, with its own managing director totally responsible for everything,’ recalled Kenneth Bond. ‘He didn’t have to buy anything in. There were no alibis. If something wasn’t right it was clearly the responsibility of the person in charge. He couldn’t blame someone else.’’"

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"se). The balance of sales shows that GEC was dominated by light electrical products. Weinstock was intent on increasing this emphasis, and he quickly began pursuing this central strategy, seeking to reduce GEC’s involvement in heavy engineering, where there were few orders and it was therefore difficult to make profits. This was a natural direction for Weinstock, given his own background in radio and television manufacture, but it was also driven by the overcapacity at the heavy end of the industry and the likelihood of continued growth in demand for consumer appliances."

"Weinstock was appalled by the mess he discovered at GEC, which opened his eyes to the way that big business was run. The top directors seemed to do little other than attend board meetings, spend a couple of weeks writing the minutes and then another couple of weeks preparing papers for the next one. ‘Even then the minutes bore little resemblance to what went on,’ Weinstock remembered. Worst of all, there were no proper figures."

"Deadlines for closing the Magnet House distribution centres were repeatedly missed. In the end Weinstock was forced to tell those in charge that at the end of the year he would lock the doors and throw any stock which was left into the sea. The lawyer David Lewis recalled: ‘Early on he found many people were ignoring his instructions. He would say: ‘Either you do it my way or you go.""*"