GE ANNOUNCES INTENT TO SEEK STRATEGIC OPTIONS FOR ITS APPLIANCES BUSINESS
President and CEO Jim Campbell talks about GE's announcement to explore strategic options for the appliances business.
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Options May Include Strategic Partnership, Spin Off or Sale
FAIRFIELD, Conn. May 16, 2008 – GE today announced that it was reviewing strategic options for its Appliances business. The Company is currently considering three possibilities for the unit: a strategic partnership or joint venture; spin off; or the sale of the business.
“This review is consistent with the strategy we have been executing to transform our portfolio for long-term growth, “ GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt said. “Since 2003 we have exited slower growth and more volatile businesses, generating $52 billion in gross proceeds from dispositions. These proceeds have been reinvested into a transformed portfolio of faster growth, higher margin businesses, stock buybacks and other restructuring activities.
“GE Appliances has a very strong brand, great distribution, a talented leadership team and for more than 100 years, has been one of the icons associated with GE in the United States,” Immelt said. “However, its remains primarily a U.S. business, meaning its fortunes are tied to the rise and fall of a single market. We want to make this good business great again by finding the right strategic solution – a solution that will give Appliances the global reach and investment required to compete more effectively,” Immelt said.
“Jim Campbell and the Appliances leadership team have done a great job running the business and I am pleased that they have agreed to remain at the business,” Immelt said. “Their leadership has been critical in creating world-class products like GE Monogram®, GE Café® and a wide range of Energy Star™ certified appliances.”
GE Appliances is part of GE Industrial’s Consumer & Industrial division, which also includes the lighting and electrical distribution businesses. Those units will remain part of GE’s industrial platform. Both businesses are global and fit well with GE’s environmental initiative, ecomagination.
GE Appliances is a $7.2 billion business and employs about 13,000 people worldwide. It is headquartered in Louisville, KY.
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GE Consumer & Industrial spans the globe as an industry leader in major appliance, lighting and integrated industrial equipment, systems and services. Providing solutions for commercial, industrial and residential use in more than 100 countries, GE Consumer & Industrial uses innovative technologies and "ecomagination," a GE initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that help customers and consumers meet pressing environmental challenges, to deliver comfort, convenience and electrical protection and control. General Electric (NYSE: GE) brings imagination to work, selling products under the Monogram®, Profile™ GE®, Hotpoint®, SmartWater™ Reveal®, Edison™ and Energy Smart® consumer brands, and Entellisys™ industrial brand. For more information, consumers may visit www.ge.com.
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