Weinstock: The Life and Times of Britain's Premier Industrialist by Alex Brummer
As managing director of GEC since 1963, Lord Weinstock has not only steered the company successfully through financial and industrial turbulence to make it one of Britain's largest and most stable businesses of the post-Cold War era: he has also been at the centre of government/industrial relations throughout that time. Weinstock retired in 1996. A man with a strategic vision of how the modern industrial enterprise should be shaped, he has never (to date) spoken at large about his life, achievements and business philosophy. Over 30 years, he has gained unique insights into the problems of economic management and the failure of successive industrial policies. This biography explores the religious and cultural influences which have shaped the Weinstock philosophy, as well as the central themes of political influence, financial management and industrial policy. The book charts his progress from his childhood as the son of an immigrant Polish-Jewish tailor to Whitehall, the property world and the electronics and defence industry.