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I worked for Westinghouse for over 20 years. Far as I know, the nuke business was the last one that still called itself “Westinghouse”. Ol’ George deserves better.

One of the Pittsburgh papers ran a series of articles called “Who Killed Westinghouse?”. Was from the time when journalists actually researched their stories and wrote them to inform rather than to indoctrinate. It detailed each CEO from the 70’s on and how their poor decisions destroyed a great company.

Buying out that poorly built Nuke plant in South Carolina from CB&I didn’t help matters either.

One of the Pittsburgh papers ran a series of articles called “Who Killed Westinghouse?”. Was from the time when journalists actually researched their stories and wrote them to inform rather than to indoctrinate. It detailed each CEO from the 70’s on and how their poor decisions destroyed a great company.

What is it culturally that Americans make the sh*^tist CEOs?

I may still have that article someplace. When the current Westinghouse co-execs. held up the finance arm as the epitome of success and challenged the other divisions to do as well they dropped the last straw on the camel. Unknown to them, the finance division was the lender of last resort for risky real estate developments that soon took the division down and Westinghouse started to crumble.

A major issue was that Westinghouse was a victim of the uranium cartel that mimicked the oil cartel actions of 73. Westinghouse would have escaped that except they had sold the uranium stock earlier. That left them exposed to the much higher prices required to meet the contract requirement to supplying fuel for the nuclear steam supply systems they sold. That brought the co-execs to power when, IIRC, Danforth decided to focus his attention on the uranium mess.

Along the way the co-execs. ended the requirement that each division must contribute to R%D at Churchill. That ended innovation.

There’s a lot of lessons to be learned from the destruction of Westinghouse.

I was at NSID for that period. The first event that caught my attention was Westinghouse selling the cable TV business which was a hot sector at that time.

Later I heard Westinghouse traders dumped uranium stocks for needed money. Soon after the Oil Embargo a cartel drove up the price of uranium and Westinghouse reneged on the NSSS contracts that included fuel.

Someone in the corner office made the decision to make funding of R&D at Churchill voluntary. About that time the finance group was held out as the pick of the litter due to the booked returns. That placed other divisions making steady returns in a bad light. Then the finance group crashed and burned.

Then the board brought went outside Westinghouse for a CEO. Screw up after screw up after screw up.