Forty-one-year-old Alfred P. Sloan, already an experienced executive, joined General Motors in 1918. GM founder William C. Durant had snapped up the United Motors Company, Sloan’s previous employer, in a spree of corporate acquisitions. It was an exciting time for American business, especially the nascent auto industry. Eight-year-old GM had already established itself as a market leader and was growing fast. But Durant’s binge mergers created problems. Though a visionary, he was unable to bind this sprawl of companies together in an orderly fashion.
