Arnold Weinstock

1924–2002

Arnold Weinstock was for three decades the British industrialist par excellence, alternately feared and admired for his success in steering an ailing manufacturer into a world technology giant while so many other British companies collapsed or were sold to foreign owners.  

Weinstock led the electrical engineering giant General Electric Co (GEC), from the 1960s when every home wanted its first television set, to a global height as a billion-pound engine of electronics and defence. He retired before the company stumbled in the early 2000s, no longer the darling of the City of London, and it failed to anticipate the coming revolution of mobile telephony and the internet.  

White Hot Technology  

A formidable manager with a microscopic grasp of costs, he was ready to close uneconomic businesses and face down trade unions during decades of industrial drama. Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who gave him a knighthood in 1970,  thought he and his company epitomised “white hot technology”. Later Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s saw him as the face of modern capitalism even as she fell out with him over defence contracts and privatisation.  

Weinstock was born in Stoke Newington, North London, to Simon, a coat-maker, and Golda, who were 50 and 46 when he was born. His much older brothers took him under their wing when he was orphaned aged 11. Mentoring by a teacher led to study of maths at the London School of Economics, which was evacuated during World War Two to Cambridge.  

While working for a Mayfair property developer after the war Weinstock was introduced to and subsequently married Netta Sobell, daughter of radio entrepreneur Michael Sobell.  

He became managing director of his father-in-law’s Radio & Allied Industries and showed what would become his trademark cost control and impatience for complacent management. Sobell and Weinstock mounted a reverse takeover of the stagnant British electrical company GEC in 1961, a coup followed by fast growth through other acquisitions.  

Weinstock was made a life peer in 1980. He stayed at the helm of GEC through to the 1990s when shareholders insisted he step aside, his style no longer fitting the times. Tragically his son and corporate heir apparent Simon Weinstock died aged 44 in 1996 before he could secure his succession.  

Father and son ran the Ballymacoll Stud in County Meath, Ireland which produced Troy, winner of the 1979 Derby. Netta died in 2019.

Arnold Weinstock
By kind permission of the Weinstock family