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What
is it about chunky, blue-eyed middle-aged gents that turns some tough
female journalists to jelly? Jani Allan, at the time South Africa’s
leading columnist, risked (and lost) her platform when falling for the
dubious charms of one of her interviewees, AWB Leader Eugene
Terreblanche. Now the editor-in-chief of the prestigious Harvard
Business Review has been forced to resign after admitting to bedding
one of her subjects, 66 year old Jack Welch, former chairman of
General Electric who is now almost as famous for his best-selling
biography “Jack”.
Welch’s soon to be ex-second wife Jane (49) whom he married in
1989, is not amused. She is suing for divorce, has hired one of New
York’s top lawyers and according to those in the know, looks like
landing a big chunk of her husband’s vast fortune. According to the
London
Financial Times, his outstanding stock options in GE alone
are worth over US$900m (R10,5 bn). A big plus factor for Mrs Welch is
the recent expiry of the once happy couple’s original pre-nuptial
contract.
Welch’s new sweetheart, attractive divorcee Suzy Wetlaufer (42),
is a mother of four. There’s obviously plenty of passion between two
as she says the affair, which started last November is still going
strong. It began after she interviewed Welch for a story. Wetlaufer,
herself a Harvard MBA graduate (class of 1988), resigned from the
editorship of the Harvard Business Review on Friday, a position she
has held for the past 17 months. But the now “out of town” journalist
will not leave the publication, returning for duty next month as
editor-at-large – an appointment which spurred two of the senior
editors to resign in protest.
Where she found the time for the Welch liason, though, is
uncertain. In an interview shortly after being appointed the HBR
editor, Wetlaufer described her typical day as: “This morning I woke
up at 5:45 and got my kids dressed, fed, and ready for school. I drove
the carpool for two of them, and I got to the office at 8:00. Since
then, I’ve done a little of everything that we do at
HBR — I edited; I acquired an article; I spoke with authors;
I wrote the beginning of the list article; I did a few employee
reviews; I interviewed a candidate for a job. I sang “Down in the
Valley” to an editor who is in the thick of a very long piece. A
typical day is pretty frenetic and contains a lot of everything, and
that is fabulous. It’s the perfect job for me. Never a dull moment. “
The normally media friendly Welch says he has no comment as it’s
“a personal matter.”
Suzy Wetlaufer
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By: Alec
Hogg