Fortune magazine, November 13, 1995: “On the September day he left the CFO’s job at IBM to lead Kirk Kerkorian’s raid on York’s former employer, Chrysler, Big Blue dropped more than a billion dollars in market value; the car maker rose by the same amount.” This was not by chance. Jerome Bailey ‘Jerry’ York Jr. was the two-billion-dollar man.
Due to a spinal injury suffered as a gymnast for the Army team, Jerry was not commissioned on graduation. He went directly to MIT for an MS degree and then started as a low-level engineer at General Motors, where he was credited with two patents. With Vietnam heating up, he tried to get the Army to give him a commission in any field, but they wouldn’t take him. He opted instead for an MBA at the University of Michigan and then left town to become President of a Hertz subsidiary at six times his GM pay. Soon thereafter he found himself as President of Chrysler, Mexico.
Jerry’s work ethic, salty language, bluntness, laser-sharp concentration, and brilliance became legendary. He could study a company’s financials and uncover crucial details that were overlooked by everyone else. Not long thereafter he was called to Detroit as Chrysler’s Chief Financial Officer and orchestrated the historic case-study known as the Chrysler bail-out. “A lean, intense man with a piercing stare, Mr. York was known at Chrysler for his obsessive work hours, especially during the auto maker’s near-collapse in the late 70s,” recalled Chrysler Vice Chairman Steve Miller in a Wall Street Journal article. “At one meeting in 1979, I turned to him to make a presentation, and he said, ‘Steve, you better handle this, I don’t feel so good.’ Then he passed out and the security guys had to come and take him away on a stretcher.” Jerry was honest, ethical, and truly loved people, but he was hard on his subordinates, his take-over targets, his West Point roommates, the plebes in I-1, and anyone else who couldn’t match his intelligence and pace (i.e., everyone).
Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2005: “Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian launched his tender offer for 28 million shares of General Motors stock and disclosed that he has hired former Chrysler and IBM executive Jerome York as a consultant. Mr. York was a key figure in Mr. Kerkorian’s unsuccessful bid to take over Chrysler in 1995.” In the 1995 attempt, they didn’t get the overhaul that they had sought, but they profitably got most of what they wanted under the sole condition that Jerry not get a seat on the board. They were terrified, with cause, as GM was soon to learn as evidenced by the following headlines: “Newest Director Shakes up GM with Calls for Radical Change” (Wall Street Journal headline March 20, 2006) and “GM Tensions Erupt as Kerkorian Ally Quits as Director” (Wall Street Journal headline October 7, 2006). GM CEO Rick Wagoner wouldn’t buy into Jerry’s many radical ideas, so Jerry resigned his board seat, Kerkorian made a handsome profit on the GM shares, GM went bankrupt, Wagoner lost his job, and Jerry’s ideas were instituted. According to an article in the June 1, 2010 Wall Street Journal: “Yet there were plenty of warnings. A dramatic one came in a January 2006 speech by auto-industry veteran Jerome B. York. Unless GM undertook drastic reforms ‘the unthinkable could happen within 1,000 days’ predicted York. As things turned out he was a mere 30 days off.”
Wall Street Journal, January 26, 1994: “If you don’t deliver for Jerry,” observed IBM Chief Strategist James Cannavino, “somebody had better be preparing for your passage into the next life.”
Wall Street Journal, January 26 1994: “Mr. York made few friends at IBM during his tenure. The ultimate outsider, he was widely feared, spending days grilling managers and underlings about inventory levels, cost controls, and processes that, to him, just didn’t make sense.”
Wall Street Journal, January 26, 1994: “[The Austin, Texas plant manager asserted] that in five years at the operation, putting out 10,000 circuit boards a day, not one board has been returned for defects. Mr. York didn’t buy it. ‘Frankly, I just don’t believe you,’ he shot back. A numbers man, he viewed the claim as ‘statistically impossible’ and told his hosts, ‘You may not be getting all the data back.’”
Later, as Steve Jobs was returning from exile and Apple was considered a national basket case, Jobs invited Jerry to join his board of directors. Jerry called his ex-boss at IBM and asked to be released from the non-compete agreement to join the Apple board. Mr. Gerstner said, “Jerry, I have no idea why you want to do it, but you certainly have my blessings.” Jerry had an innate ability to recognize a winner. Apple soon passed both IBM and GM as the largest market-cap company in the United States.
A prophetic York quote from CFO Magazine, November 1993: “I get into bed Sunday night thinking I have another week in front of me. And it seems like five hours later the week is over. The time flies. Nice work, if you can get it. Unless time runs out.”
Jerry is survived by his wife, Eilene, four children, and six grandchildren.