Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch reportedly rejected an opportunity to purchase Apple for $2 billion.

According to a new memoir from Bob Wright, the longtime head of NBCUniversal who worked alongside Welch, the executive passed up the chance to buy Apple for a bargain basement price.

Wright told the New York Post that then–Apple chief Michael Spindler approached GE in 1996, as the tech giant struggled to regain its footing in the absence of Steve Jobs, "practically begging" General Electric to buy Apple for $2 billion.

“The stock price was $20, and [Spindler] was explaining he couldn’t get the company moving fast enough and the analysts were on his case,” Wright told the Post. “He was sweating like mad and everybody said, ‘We can’t manage technology like that.’ We had a chance to buy it for $2 billion."

So they walked away. Apple is now worth more than $700 billion, more than 300 times what Welch could have bought it for. GE, by contrast, is worth less than half of that.

But after months of declines in Apple's stock, sentiment appears to be mending as investors focus on steady earnings expectations and bet that the expected launch of a new iPhone will add badly-needed fuel to sputtering sales, Reuters reported.

Battered by nearly a year of off-and-on declines from record highs because of fears of a slowdown in iPhone sales, Apple's stock now is valued closer to IBM, which has disappointed Wall Street for the past four years with declining revenue, than to Silicon Valley technology pioneers Alphabet and Tesla Motors.

"This company has a history of doing better than expectations and surprising people," said Daniel Morgan, Senior Portfolio Manager at Synovus Trust Company, which holds over 1 million shares of Apple. "Where else can I go and find a company trading at 10 or 11 times earnings that has had such a great history?"

(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).

Related Stories:
   

• Jack Welch Endorses Ted Cruz
• Jack Welch Sees 'Pocket of Change' for Good in Economy