Jermoe “Jerry” York sounds like quite a character. From Newest Director Shakes Up GM With Calls for Radical Change:
A Memphis, Tenn., native and son of an Army colonel, Mr. York graduated from West Point but a gymnastics injury ended a possible military career. He received a master’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and arrived in Detroit in 1963 to take a job as a GM project engineer. While working toward an M.B.A. at night, he received several carburetor-design patents.But he wanted more. Mr. York quickly revealed his intention to ‘become the chairman and CEO,’ according to his first boss, Craig Marks.
A restless workaholic, Mr. York switched into operations and then finance. He moved to Ford Motor Co. and eventually to Chrysler. In 1979, when Chrysler was on the verge of bankruptcy, he stayed up all night on coffee and cigarettes preparing a financial presentation. (He still smokes a pack a day.) Three minutes into his talk, he fainted. Medics carried him out on a stretcher.
Mr. York left the auto industry in 1993 to become chief financial officer under Louis Gerstner at IBM. There he honed his reputation as a cost-cutter. Mr. York ‘let the numbers tell him what was wrong with the strategy,’ says Paul Sterne, who worked with him at GM and IBM. ‘He would rip people apart who didn’t deliver.’
He drove himself hard. During a blizzard, Mr. York arrived early one morning with a snowplow attached to the front of his Dodge pickup truck. He devoured spicy Italian and Mexican food. Meanwhile, he urged IBM executives to treat corporate spending as their ‘family checkbook.’