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Jerry York’s death was announced today by Apple, where he was a member of the board of directors. He was rushed to Pontiac Osteopathic Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan, Tuesday night. He died of a brain aneurysm.

York’s most recent ventures include his famous -- and ill-fated -- dealing with General Motors through investor Kirk Kerkorian’s Tracinda Corp. Kerkorian bought up a large share of GM stock and elected York to serve on the board of directors for the company, where he proposed an alliance with Renault/Nissan and suggested cutting several brands. After getting his proposals rejected, Kerkorian sold his stock in GM and York left the board.

“I have grave reservations concerning the ability of the company’s current business model to successfully compete in the marketplace with those of the Asian producers,” York famously wrote in his resignation letter to GM in 2006. He told The Wall Street Journal he “feared the unthinkable could happen.” Three years later, GM declared bankruptcy and shed four of its brands.

A similar scenario happened in the mid-1990s when York was serving as Kerkorian’s delegate on the Chrysler board of directors. The takeover again failed, but not before Kerkorian made over $3 billion.

York’s illustrious career began at GM after he received an engineering degree from MIT. He worked there while simultaneously working on his MBA at the University of Michigan. After finishing his MBA, he switched to the business side of GM and was shortly hired away by Ford, and then Chrysler. He joined Chrysler in 1979, just in time for one of the most serious crises in Chrysler’s history.

“The dullest thing in the world to do is to get out of bed in the morning and go to work where there are no significant problems to deal with,” York told Automotive News in 1992. He was known as an extremely hard worker and couldn’t have been bored at Chrysler, where he once fainted in the middle of a presentation after staying up all night working.

York rose through the ranks at Chrysler and was a leading candidate to replace Lee Iacocca as Chrysler’s chairman when he retired in 1992. York however, was not chosen to replace Iacocca and instead remained Chrysler’s CFO, a position he took two years earlier. He later became CFO at IBM and led the company’s turnaround and joined Apple’s board in 1997, where he still served until his passing today.

Source: Apple, The Wall Street Journal

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