For most of his 25 years at General Electric, John Krenicki has been the kind of manager tasked with making the best of a difficult situation, whether it be running the mature lighting business in the Americas or turning round a plastics division beset by volatile oil prices.

“The real world is tough times,” Mr Krenicki, a GE vice-chairman who runs the energy-infrastructure unit, told the Financial Times. “And so I’m better for it, in that I’ve been, you know, knocked down.”