For Her And Many Others, ‘For Richer’ Gains Clout
The corporate world was shocked to its socks earlier this month by a story reverberating across the boardrooms, locker rooms, golf courses, yacht basins and country clubs of America.
No, it wasn’t a new surtax on millionaires. But let me tell you, every corporate wife in the land took more than a cursory interest. Every Fortune 500 mistress re-examined her chances of landing the big one with something more binding than the constant promise of a few stolen days next year in Acapulco. And every bored, seven-figure-earning executive went home to his wife with an attitude suggesting that maybe there was mileage in the old girl yet, that trading her in was something to be reconsidered with care.
What happened was this: Lorna Wendt, wife of the chief executive of GE Capital Services, demanded half her husband’s fortune in their divorce case. It is estimated to be well in excess of $100 million - not surprising, since GE Capital is General Electric’s cash cow, producing vastly more earnings in a typical year than refrigerators, light bulbs, washing machines, jet engines or even such trophy subsidiaries as the National Broadcasting Co. do. She got only $20 million plus a lot of miscellaneous stuff, including $252,000 a year in alimony and a lifetime credit card that gives her a 45 percent discount at Macy’s.
Wendt insists she earned it all and much more because “he brought home the bacon but I shopped for it, cooked it and cleaned up after it.” I tell you, this case has everything, including: A woman who “lost” but ended up with an estate most women would have - and actually have - killed for.
A poster girl for feminism who is curiously atypical of feminists because her idea of a wifely corporate life would fit most people’s idea of what a geisha girl is for.
An intimate peek into a lifestyle to drool over: mansions, stocks, options, country club memberships and monthly beauty parlor expenses in excess of the entire monthly take-home pay of many American households.
A revealing view of corporate culture that isn’t quite as appealing: 90-hour workweeks for him. And for her, the drudgery of cooking bacon relieved only by feverish party giving, flattering other wives and, I guess, grueling hours conspicuously lolling around the pool of Stanwich Country Club to confirm the proper image of a success-driven “GE wife.”
An issue that can be stood on its head to prove just about anything: the exploitation of females, the dehumanizing effects of corporate life, the debasement of the marriage sacrament into a squalid exercise in asset allocation.
Media reaction included the usual voyeuristic rubbish as well as some leaden attempts to elevate this unseemly squabble between two people who can’t stand each other into one of the social issues of our time. The New York Times, which normally doesn’t do divorces, weighed in with a ponderous piece about how the case was “closely watched in corporate suites around the country” and going to the heart of “an issue with a growing number of couples as executive pay has soared.” The Times even devoted an editorial to the divorce, which came to no point but swooned about Lorna’s struggles “maintaining a gracious home.”
Holman Jenkins, writing in The Wall Street Journal, took a loftier view of the Wendt fortune, saying, “If that makes him a corporate creep, his wife wants to be one, too.” Holman added, “If the marriage was from the start, or became, a pursuit of money, should society be sanctifying that? Wasn’t their ‘partnership’ supposed to be about something else?” He portrayed Wendt as a man “trapped by a problematic set of values” and concluded, “That he caught this virus wouldn’t be surprising, but his wife caught it, too. Now she wants to give it to the rest of us.”
Maybe abused women will be given hope by the example of Lorna Wendt. And there are some silent parties to this case who haven’t been heard from. No, they aren’t some lurking floozies who may have helped shatter this marriage. They are, rather, General Electric Co. stockholders who, until Lorna Wendt and the judge pointed it out to them, may have been unaware that the fortunes they dreamed of making on GE shares were more likely to be realized by GE executives. And they have the word of the court that Lorna Wendt was a multimillion-dollar asset who by all logic ought to have been listed in the GE annual report and in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
As it is, a piece of meat in the refrigerator of the GE executive dining room is more likely to be found on GE’s books than the priceless asset GE held in this invaluable, party-giving, bacon-cooking woman.
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