Lawrence Bossidy

Lawrence A. ("Larry") Bossidy (born March 5, 1935) is a businessman and author. He is a retired CEO of AlliedSignal (later Honeywell), and has also spent more than 30 years rising into executive power at General Electric.

Bossidy was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts on March 5, 1935 and has a twin brother, Tom Bossidy. Bossidy worked at the family shoe store growing up, had dreams of being a big league baseball pitcher. and once had a summer job of pitching baseball for a college league team in Quebec, Canada. When Bossidy was a senior in high school he had a 95+ mph fastball & a scout offered Bossidy a $40,000 contract to pitch for the Detroit Tigers. However, when the scout came to Bossidy's house with a check, Bossidy's mother wouldn't let him in the house insisting that Bossidy finish his studies at Colgate. While at Colgate, he helped lead them to the college world series and was inducted into their sports hall of fame.

Bossidy graduated from Colgate University in 1957 with a BA in economics. He was a member of the Mu Chapter of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Colgate. Bossidy was later conferred a doctorate of Humane Letters from Colgate.

Bossidy joined General Electric in 1957. Bossidy started out in General Electric's financial training program. Bossidy stayed with General Electric for the next 34 years rising in the company through a number of executive positions including chief operating officer of General Electric Credit Corporation from 1979 to 1981, Executive Vice President and President of GE's Services and Materials Sector from 1981 to 1984, and vice-chairman and Executive Officer of the General Electric Company from 1984 to 1991.

One of Bossidy's most important jobs at General Electric was as chief operating officer of General Electric Credit Corporation from 1979 to 1981. During Bossidy's tenure as head of General Electric Credit Corporation, the subsidiary, founded in 1943, came into its own. Between 1979 and 1984, its assets doubled, to $16 billion, due to expansion into leasing and selling of heavy industrial goods, inventories, real estate, and insurance. The leasing operations also provided General Electric with tax shelters from accelerated depreciation on equipment that GE developed that were then leased by the credit corporation. Dennis Dammerman worked for Bossidy at GE Credit and remembered that Bossidy "could be boisterous and a little unsettling to the insecure. He challenged everything, If you couldn't back up what you said, look out. But he also challenges himself."

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