Business leaders are being knocked off their pedestals faster than Communist heroes after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Bernie Ebbers, a deal maker from Mississippi whose creation, WorldCom, was the epitome of telecoms excitement, was forced out this week. Diana "DeDe" Brooks, a forceful former chief executive of Sotheby's, was sentenced to house arrest and narrowly missed jail―the fate handed out to her former chairman, Alfred Taubman. Even Jack Welch, the former boss of General Electric who was perhaps the best-known celebrity chief executive of all, has seen his reputation dive. The vehemence of today's reaction against business leaders is partly a reflection of how far their companies' shares have fallen, and also of the extent of their personal greed. But it is also a reaction against the worship heaped on them in the 1990S. Revolutions devour their children, and the impact of new technology and the bull market on business was little short of a revolution. Now for the devouring.
展开▼
