General Electric

For more information on General Electric Co., visit Britannica.com.

View more Business & Finance videos

Type: Public
On the web: http://www.ge.com
Employees: 287,000
Employee growth: (5.6%)

From turbines to TV, from household appliances to power plants, General Electric (GE) is plugged in to businesses that have shaped the modern world. The company produces -- take a deep breath -- aircraft engines, locomotives and other transportation equipment, kitchen and laundry appliances, lighting, electric distribution and control equipment, generators and turbines, and medical imaging equipment. GE is also one of the US's pre-eminent financial services providers. GE Capital, comprising commercial finance, commercial aircraft leasing, real estate, and energy financial services, is its largest segment. GE's other segments are Energy, Technology Infrastructure, and GE Home & Business Solutions.

Key numbers for fiscal year ending December, 2010:
Sales: $150,211.0M
One year growth: (4.2%)
Net income: $11,644.0M
Income growth: 5.6%

Officers:
Vice Chairman; President and CEO, Global Operations: John G. Rice
Vice Chairman and CFO: Keith S. Sherin
Managing Director Communications and Public Affairs, GE Capital: Russell Wilkerson

Competitors:
Citigroup
Philips Electronics
Siemens AG

Incorporated: 1892
NAIC: 325211 Plastics Material & Resin Manuf.; 325413 In-Vitro Diagnostic Substance Manuf.; 333415 Air-Conditioning & Warm Air Heating Equip. & Comm. & Industrial Refrigeration Equip. Manuf.; 333611 Turbine & Turbine Generator Set Units Manuf.; 334510 Electromedical & Electrotherapeutic Apparatus Manuf.; 334512 Automatic Environ. Control Manuf. for Residential, Comm., & Appl. Use; 334515 Instrument Manuf. for Measuring & Testing Electricity & Electrical Signals; 335110 Electric Lamp Bulb & Part Manuf.; 335121 Residential Electric Lighting Fixture Manuf.; 335122 Comm., Industrial, & Institutional Electric Lighting Fixture Manuf.; 335221 Household Cooking Appl. Manuf.; 335222 Household Refrig. & Home Freezer Manuf.; 335224 Household Laundry Equip. Manuf.; 335228 Other Major Household Appl. Manuf.; 335311 Power, Distribution, & Specialty Transformer Manuf.; 335312 Motor & Generator Manuf.; 335313 Switchgear & Switchboard Apparatus Manuf.; 335931 Current-Carrying Wiring Device Manuf.; 336321 Vehicular Lighting Equip. Manuf.; 336412 Aircraft Engines & Engine Parts Manuf.; 336510 Railroad Rolling Stock Manuf.; 512110 Motion Picture & Video Prod.; 512120 Motion Picture & Video Distribution; 515120 Television Broadcasting; 515210 Cable & Other Subscription Programming; 522110 Comm. Banking; 522210 Credit Card Issuing; 522220 Sales Financing; 522291 Consumer Lending; 522292 Real Estate Credit; 524130 Reinsurance Carriers; 532411 Comm. Air, Rail, & Water Trans. Equip. Rental & Leasing; 532420 Office Machinery & Equip. Rental & Leasing; 532490 Other Comm. & Industrial Machinery & Equip. Rental & Leasing; 541710 Research & Development in the Physical, Engineering, & Life Sciences; 713110 Amusement & Theme Parks

The history of General Electric Company is a significant part of the history of technology in the United States. General Electric (GE) has evolved from Thomas Edison's home laboratory into one of the largest companies in the world, following the evolution of electrical technology from the simplest early applications into the high-tech wizardry of the early 21st century. The company has also evolved into a conglomerate, with an increasing shift from technology to services, and with 11 main operating units: GE Advanced Materials, a specialist in high-performance engineered thermoplastics, silicon-based products, and fused quartz and ceramics used in a wide variety of industries; GE Consumer & Industrial, which is one of the world's leading appliance manufacturers, stands as a preeminent global maker of lighting products for consumer, commercial, and industrial customers, and also provides integrated industrial equipment, systems, and services; GE Energy, one of the largest technology suppliers to the energy industry; GE Equipment Services, which offers leases, loans, and other services to medium and large businesses around the world to help them manage their business equipment; GE Healthcare, a world leader in medical diagnostic and interventional imaging technology and services; GE Infrastructure, which is involved in high-technology protective and productivity solutions in such areas as water purification, facility safety, plant automation, and automatic environmental controls; GE Transportation, the largest producer of small and large jet engines for commercial and military aircraft in the world, as well as the number one maker of diesel freight locomotives in North America; NBC Universal (80 percent owned by GE), a global media and entertainment giant with a wide range of assets, including the NBC and Telemundo television networks, several cable channels, and the Universal Pictures film studio; GE Commercial Finance, which provides businesses, particularly in the mid-market segment, with an array of financial services and products, including loans, operating leases, and financing programs; GE Consumer Finance, a leading financial services provider, serving consumers, retailers, and auto dealer in about three dozen countries; and GE Insurance, which is involved in such areas as life insurance, asset management, mortgage insurance, and reinsurance. The staggering size of General Electric, which ranked fifth in the Fortune 500 in 2003, becomes even more evident through the revelation that each of the company's 11 operating units, if listed separately, would qualify as a Fortune 500 company. GE operates in more than 100 countries worldwide and generates approximately 45 percent of its revenues outside the United States. Over the course of its 110-plus years of innovation, General Electric has amassed more than 67,500 patents, and the firm's scientists have been awarded two Nobel Prizes and numerous other honors.

Thomas Edison established himself in the 1870s as an inventor after devising, at the age of 23, an improved stock ticker. He subsequently began research on an electric light as a replacement for gas light, the standard method of illumination at the time. In 1876 Edison moved into a laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. Two years later, in 1878, Edison established, with the help of his friend Grosvenor Lowry, the Edison Electric Light Company with a capitalization of $300,000. Edison received half of the new company's shares on the agreement that he work on developing an incandescent lighting system. The major problem Edison and his team of specialists faced was finding an easy-to-produce filament that would resist the passage of electrical current in the bulb for a long time. He triumphed only a year after beginning research when he discovered that common sewing thread, once carbonized, worked in the laboratory. For practical applications, however, he switched to carbonized bamboo.

Developing an electrical lighting system for a whole community involved more than merely developing an electric bulb; the devices that generated, transmitted, and controlled electric power also had to be invented. Accordingly, Edison organized research into all of these areas and in 1879, the same year that he produced an electric bulb, he also constructed the first dynamo, or direct-current (DC) generator.

The original application of electric lighting was on the steamship Columbia in 1880. In that same year, Edison constructed a three-mile-long trial electric railroad at his Menlo Park laboratory. The first individual system of electric lighting came in 1881, in a printing plant. But the first full-scale public application of the Edison lighting system was actually made in London, at the Holborn Viaduct. The first system in the United States came soon after when Pearl Street Station was opened in New York City. Components of the system were manufactured by different companies, some of which were organized by Edison; lamps came from the parent company, dynamos from the Edison Machine Works, and switches from Bergmann & Company of New York. In 1886 the Edison Machine Works was moved from New Jersey to Schenectady, New York.

While these developments unfolded at Edison's company, the Thomson-Houston Company was formed from the American Electric Company, founded by Elihu Thomson and Edwin Houston, who held several patents for their development of arc lighting. Some of their electrical systems differed from Edison's through the use of alternating-current (AC) equipment, which can transmit over longer distances than DC systems. By the early 1890s the spread of electrification was threatened by the conflict between the two technologies and by patent deadlocks, which prevented further developments because of patent-infringement problems.

By 1889, Edison had consolidated all of his companies under the name of Edison General Electric Company. Three years later, in 1892, this company was merged with the Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form the General Electric Company. Although this merger was the turning point in the electrification of the United States, it resulted in Edison's resignation from GE. He had been appointed to the board of directors but he attended only one board meeting, and sold all of his shares in 1894, though he remained a consultant to General Electric and continued to collect royalties on his patents. The president of the new company was Charles A. Coffin, a former shoe manufacturer who had been the leading figure at Thomson-Houston. Coffin remained president of General Electric until 1913, and was chairman thereafter until 1922. Meanwhile, also in 1892, GE's stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

In 1884 Frank Julian Sprague, an engineer who had worked on electric systems with Edison, resigned and formed the Sprague Electric Railway and Motor Company, which built the first large-scale electric streetcar system in the United States, in Richmond, Virginia. In 1889 Sprague's company was purchased by Edison's. In the meantime, the two other major electric-railway companies in the United States had merged with Thomson-Houston, so that by the time General Electric was formed, it was the major supplier of electrified railway systems in the United States.

One year after the formation of General Electric, the company won a bid for the construction of large AC motors in a textile mill in South Carolina. The motors were the largest manufactured by General Electric at the time and were so successful that orders soon began to flow in from other industries such as cement, paper, and steel. In that same year, General Electric began its first venture into the field of power transmission with the opening of the Redlands-Mill Creek power line in California, and in 1894 the company constructed a massive power-transmission line at Niagara Falls. Meanwhile the company's electric-railroad ventures produced an elevated electric train surrounding the fairgrounds of the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. Electrification of existing rail lines began two years later.

By the turn of the century General Electric was manufacturing everything involved in the electrification of the United States: generators to produce electricity, transmission equipment to carry power, industrial electric motors, electric light bulbs, and electric locomotives. It is important to any understanding of the evolution of GE to realize that though it was diverse from the beginning, all of its enterprises centered on the electrification program. It is also worth noting that it operated in the virtual absence of competition. General Electric and the Westinghouse Electric Company had been competitors, but the companies entered into a patent pool in 1896.

In 1900 GE established the first industrial laboratory in the United States. Up to that point, research had been carried out in universities or in private laboratories similar to Edison's Menlo Park laboratory. Initially, the lab was set up in a barn behind the house of one of the researchers, but the lab was moved in 1900 to Schenectady, New York, after it was destroyed in a fire. The head of the research division was a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The importance of research at General Electric cannot be underestimated, for GE has been awarded more patents over the years than any other company in the United States.

During the early decades of the 20th century General Electric made further progress in its established fields and also made its first major diversification. In 1903 General Electric bought the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a manufacturer of transformers. Its founder, William Stanley, was the developer of the transformer.

By this time GE's first light bulbs were in obvious need of improvement. Edison's bamboo filament was replaced in 1904 by metalized carbon developed by the company's research lab. That filament, in turn, was replaced several years later by a tungsten-filament light bulb when William Coolidge, a GE researcher, discovered a process to render the durable metal more pliable. This light bulb was so rugged and well suited for use in automobiles, railroad cars, and street cars that it was still employed in the early 2000s. In 1913, two other innovations came out of the GE labs: Irving Langmuir discovered that gas-filled bulbs were more efficient and reduced bulb blackening. To this day virtually all bulbs over 40 watts are gas-filled.

The first high-vacuum, hot-cathode X-ray tube, known as the Coolidge tube, was also developed in 1913. Coolidge's research into tungsten had played an important role in the development of the X-ray tube. The device, which combined a vacuum with a heated tungsten filament and tungsten target, has been the foundation of virtually all X-ray tubes produced ever since, and its development laid the foundation for medical technology operations at General Electric.

Perhaps GE's most important development in the early part of this century was its participation in the development of the high-speed steam turbine in conjunction with English, Swedish, and other inventors. Until this invention, all electricity (except hydroelectric) had been produced by generators that turned at no more than 100 rpm, which limited the amount of electricity a single unit could produce. An independent inventor had come up with a design for a very-high-speed steam turbine before the turn of the century, but it took five years of research before GE could construct a working model. By 1901, however, a 500-kilowatt, 1,200-rpm turbine generator was operating. Orders for the turbines followed almost immediately, and by 1903 a 5,000-kilowatt turbine was in use at Chicago's Commonwealth Edison power company.

Such rapid progress led to rapid obsolescence as well, and the Chicago units were replaced within six years. As a result, GE shops in Schenectady were soon overflowing with business. By 1910 the volume of the company's trade in turbine generators had tripled and GE had sold almost one million kilowatts of power capacity. At the same time, General Electric scientists were also researching the gas turbine. Their investigations eventually resulted in the first flight of an airplane equipped with a turbine-powered supercharger.

In the early days of electric power, electricity was produced only during evening hours, because electric lighting was not needed during the day and there were no other products to use electricity. GE, as the producer of both electricity-generating equipment and electricity-consuming devices, naturally sought to expand both ends of its markets. The first major expansion of the General Electric product line was made in the first decade of the 20th century. Before the turn of the century, light bulbs and electric fans were GE's only consumer product. One of the first household appliances GE began to market was a toaster in 1905. The following year the company attempted to market an electric range. The unwieldy device consisted of a wooden table top equipped with electric griddles, pans, toasters, waffle irons, pots, and a coffeemaker, each with its own retractable cord to go into any one of 30 plugs. The range was followed by a commercial electric refrigerator in 1911 and by an experimental household refrigerator six years later.

At the same time two other companies in the United States were producing electric devices for the home. The Pacific Electric Heating Company produced the first electric appliance to be readily accepted by the public: the Hotpoint iron. The Hughes Electric Heating Company produced and marketed an electric range. In 1918 all three companies were prospering, but to avoid competition with one another, they agreed upon a merger. The new company combined GE's heating-device section with Hughes and Pacific to form the Edison Electric Appliance Company, whose products bore either the GE or the Hotpoint label.

GE's first diversification outside electricity came with its establishment of a research staff to investigate plastics. This occurred primarily at the prompting of Charles P. Steinmetz, a brilliant mathematician who had been with the company since the 1890s. All of the initial work by this group was devoted to coatings, varnishes, insulation, and other products related to electrical wiring, so that even this diversification was tied in to electrification.

A more radical branching of GE's activities occurred in 1912, when Ernst Alexanderson, a GE employee, was approached by a radio pioneer looking for a way to expand the range of wireless sets into higher frequencies. Alexanderson worked for almost a decade on the project before he succeeded in creating electromagnetic waves that could span continents, instead of the short distances to which radios had been limited. In 1922, General Electric introduced its own radio station, WGY, in Schenectady. In 1919, at the request of the government, GE formed, in partnership with AT&T and Westinghouse, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) to develop radio technology. GE withdrew from the venture in 1930, when antitrust considerations came to the fore. General Electric also operated two experimental shortwave stations that had a global range.

Other developments at General Electric contributed to the progress of the radio. Irving Langmuir had developed the electron tube. This tube, necessary for amplifying the signals in Alexanderson's radio unit, was capable of operating at very high power. Other important developments by scientists at General Electric included the world's first practical loudspeaker and a method for recording complex sound on film that is still in use today.

Developments continued apace at GE in the electric motor field. In 1913 the U.S. Navy commissioned General Electric to build the first ship to be powered by turbine motors rather than steam. In 1915 the first turbine-propelled battleship sailed forth, and within a few years, all of the Navy's large ships were equipped with electric power. General Electric also owned several utility companies that generated electrical power, but in 1924 GE left the utilities business when the federal government brought antitrust action against the company.

During the Great Depression the company introduced a variety of consumer items such as mixers, vacuum cleaners, air conditioners, and washing machines. GE also introduced the first affordable electric refrigerator in the late 1920s. It was designed by a Danish toolmaker, Christian Steenstrup, who later supervised mechanical research at the GE plant in Schenectady. In addition, GE introduced its first electric dishwasher in 1932, the same year that consumer financing of personal appliances was introduced.

Also in 1932 the first Nobel Prize ever awarded to a scientist not affiliated with a university went to Irving Langmuir for his work at GE on surface chemistry, research that had grown out of his earlier work on electron tubes. The years that followed witnessed a steady stream of innovation in electronics from the GE labs. These included the photoelectric-relay principle, rectifier tubes that eliminated batteries from home receivers, the cathode-ray tube, and glass-to-metal seals for vacuum tubes. Many of these developments in electronics were crucial to the growth of radio broadcasting.

The broadcasting division of General Electric achieved a breakthrough in the late 1930s. The company had been developing a mode of transmission known as frequency modulation (FM) as an alternative to the prevailing amplitude modulation (AM). In 1939 a demonstration conducted for the Federal Communications Commission proved that FM had less static and noise. GE began broadcasting in FM the following year.

Of course, the light bulb was not forgotten in this broadening of research activity at General Electric. The world's first mercury-vapor lamp was introduced in 1934, followed four years later by the fluorescent lamp. The latter produced light using half the power of incandescent bulbs, with about twice the lifespan. Less than a year after the introduction of the fluorescent light, General Electric introduced the sealed-beam automotive headlight.

Even though production of convenience items for the consumer halted during World War II, the war proved profitable for General Electric, whose revenues quadrupled during the war. The president of General Electric at the time, Charles Wilson, joined the War Production Board in 1942. GE produced more than 50 different types of radar for the armed forces and over 1,500 marine power plants for the Navy and merchant marine. The company, using technology developed by the Englishman Frank Whittle, also conducted research on jet engines for aircraft. The Bell XP-59, the first U.S. jet aircraft, flew in 1942 powered by General Electric engines. By the end of the war this technology helped General Electric develop the nation's first turboprop engine.

When production of consumer goods resumed immediately after the war, GE promptly found itself in another antitrust battle. The government discovered that GE controlled 85 percent of the light bulb industry--55 percent through its own output and the other 30 percent through licensees. In 1949 the court forced GE to release its patents to other companies.

In this period the first true product diversifications came out of GE's research labs. In the 1940s a GE scientist discovered a way to produce large quantities of silicone, a material GE had been investigating for a long time. In 1947 GE opened a plant to produce silicones, which allowed the introduction of many products using silicone as a sealant or lubricant.

Meanwhile, as research innovation blossomed and postwar business boomed, the company began an employee relations policy known as "Boulwarism," from Lemuel Boulware, the manager who established the policy. The policy, which eliminated much of the bargaining involved in labor-management relations, included the extension by GE to union leaders of a nonnegotiable contract offer.

During the late 1940s General Electric embarked on a study of nuclear power and constructed a laboratory specifically for the task. Company scientists involved in an earlier attempt to separate U-235 from natural uranium were developing nuclear power plants for naval propulsion by 1946. In 1955 the Navy launched the submarine Seawolf, the world's first nuclear-powered vessel, with a reactor developed by General Electric. In 1957 the company received a license from the Atomic Energy Commission to operate a nuclear-power reactor, the first license granted in the United States for a privately owned generating station. That same year GE's consumer appliance operations got a big boost when an enormous manufacturing site, Appliance Park, in Louisville, Kentucky, was completed. The flow of new GE products--hair dryers, skillets, electronic ovens, self-cleaning ovens, electric knives--continued.

Other innovations to come from GE labs during the 1950s included an automatic pilot for jet aircraft, Lexan polycarbonate resin, the first all-transistor radio, jet turbine engines, gas turbines for electrical power generation, and a technique for fabricating diamonds.

Antitrust problems continued to vex the company throughout the postwar years. In 1961 the Justice Department indicted 29 companies, of which GE was the biggest, for price fixing on electrical equipment. All the defendants pleaded guilty. GE's fine was almost half a million dollars, damages it paid to utilities who had purchased price-fixed equipment came to at least $50 million, and three GE managers received jail sentences and several others were forced to leave the company.

During the 1960s and 1970s GE grew in all fields. In 1961 it opened a research center for aerospace projects, and by the end of the decade had more than 6,000 employees involved in 37 projects related to the moon landing. In the 1950s General Electric entered the computer business. This venture, however, proved to be such a drain on the company's profits that GE sold its computer business to Honeywell in 1971.

By the late 1960s, GE's management began to feel that the company had become too large for its existing structures to accommodate. Accordingly, the company instituted a massive organizational restructuring. Under this restructuring program, the number of distinct operating units within the company was cut from more than 200 to 43. Each new section operated in a particular market and was headed by a manager who reported to management just beneath the corporate policy board. The sections were classified into one of three categories--growth, stability, or no-growth--to facilitate divestment of unprofitable units.

When this reorganization was complete, General Electric made what was at the time the largest corporate purchase ever. In December 1976 GE paid $2.2 billion for Utah International, a major coal, copper, uranium, and iron miner and a producer of natural gas and oil. The company did 80 percent of its business in foreign countries. Within a year Utah International was contributing 18 percent of GE's total earnings.

In the meantime, GE scientist Ivar Giaever was a corecipient of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discoveries in the area of superconductive tunneling. Giaever became the second GE employee to be honored with a Nobel Prize.

The divestiture of its computer business had left GE without any capacity for manufacturing integrated circuits and the high-technology products in which they are used. In 1975 a study of the company's status concluded that GE, one of the first U.S. electrical companies, had fallen far behind in electronics. As a result, GE spent some $385 million to acquire Intersil, a semiconductor manufacturer; Calma, a producer of computer graphics equipment; and four software producers. The company also spent more than $100 million to expand its microelectronics facilities.

Other fields in which GE excelled were in trouble by the mid-1970s, most notably nuclear power. As plant construction costs skyrocketed and environmental concerns grew, the company's nuclear power division began to lose money. GE's management, however, was convinced that the problem was temporary and that sales would pick up in the future. When by 1980 General Electric had received no new orders for plants in five years, nuclear power began to look more and more like a prime candidate for divestment. GE eventually pulled out of all aspects of the nuclear power business except for providing service and fuel to existing plants and conducting research on nuclear energy.

Though General Electric's growth was tremendous during the 1970s and earnings tripled between 1971 and 1981, the company's stock performance was mediocre. GE had become so large and was involved in so many activities that some regarded its fortunes as capable only of following the fortunes of the country as a whole.

GE's economic problems were mirrored by its managerial reshuffling. When John F. (Jack) Welch, Jr., became chairman and CEO in 1981, General Electric entered a period of radical change. Over the next several years, GE bought 338 businesses and product lines for $11.1 billion and sold 232 for $5.9 billion. But Welch's first order of business was to return much of the control of the company to the periphery. Although he decentralized management, he retained predecessor Reginald Jones's system of classifying divisions according to their performance. His goal was to make GE number one or two in every field of operation.

One branch of GE's operations that came into its own during this period was the General Electric Credit Corporation, founded in 1943. Between 1979 and 1984, its assets doubled, to $16 billion, primarily because of expansion into such markets as the leasing and selling of heavy industrial goods, inventories, real estate, and insurance. In addition, the leasing operations provided the parent company with tax shelters from accelerated depreciation on equipment developed by GE and then leased by the credit corporation.

Factory automation became a major activity at GE during the early 1980s. GE's acquisitions of Calma and Intersil were essential to this program. In addition, GE entered into an agreement with Japan's Hitachi, Ltd. to manufacture and market Hitachi's industrial robots in the United States. GE itself spent $300 million to robotize its locomotive plant in Erie, Pennsylvania. Two years later GE's aircraft engine business also participated in an air force plant-modernization program and GE later manufactured the engines for the controversial B-1B bomber.

In 1986 General Electric made several extremely important purchases. The largest--in fact, the largest for the company to that date--was the $6.4 billion purchase of the Radio Corporation of American (RCA), the company GE had helped to found in 1919. RCA's National Broadcasting Company (NBC), the leading U.S. television network, brought GE into the broadcasting business in full force. Although both RCA and GE were heavily involved in consumer electronics, the match was regarded by industry analysts as beneficial, because GE had been shifting from manufacturing into service and high technology. After the merger, almost 80 percent of GE's earnings came from services and high technology, compared to 50 percent six years earlier. GE divested itself of RCA's famous David Sarnoff Research Center, because GE's labs made it redundant. In 1987 GE also sold its own and RCA's television manufacturing businesses to the French company Thomson in exchange for Thomson's medical diagnostics business.

GE justified the merger by citing the need for size to compete effectively with large Japanese conglomerates. Critics, however, claimed that GE was running from foreign competition by increasing its defense contracts (to almost 20 percent of its total business) and its service business, both of which were insulated from foreign competition.

In 1986 GE also purchased the Employers Reinsurance Corporation, a financial services company, from Texaco, for $1.1 billion, and an 80 percent interest in Kidder Peabody and Company, an investment banking firm, for $600 million, greatly broadening its financial services division. Although Employer's Reinsurance contributed steadily to GE's bottom line following its purchase, Kidder Peabody lost $48 million in 1987, in part because of the settlement of insider trading charges. Kidder Peabody did come back in 1988 to contribute $46 million in earnings, but the acquisition still troubled some analysts. GE owned 100 percent of Kidder Peabody by 1990.

General Electric's operations were divided into three business groups in the early 1990s: technology, service, and manufacturing. Its manufacturing operations, traditionally the core of the company, accounted for roughly one-third of the company's earnings. Still, GE continued to pour more than $1 billion annually into research and development of manufactured goods. Much of that investment was directed at energy conservation--more efficient light bulbs, jet engines, and electrical power transmission methods, for example.

In 1992 GE signaled its intent to step up overseas activity with the purchase of 50 percent of the European appliance business of Britain's General Electric Company (GEC). The two companies also made agreements related to their medical, power systems, and electrical distribution businesses. Welch said that his aim was to make GE the nation's largest company. To that end, General Electric continued to restructure its existing operations in an effort to become more competitive in all of its businesses. Most importantly, the company launched an aggressive campaign to become dominant in the growing financial services sector.

GE's aggressive initiatives related to financial services reflected the fact that the service sector represented more than three-quarters of the U.S. economy going into the mid-1990s. Furthermore, several service industries, including financial, were growing rapidly. GE's revenues from its giant NBC and GE Capital divisions, for example, rose more than 12 percent annually from about $14.3 billion in 1988 to more than $25 billion in 1994. Encouraged by those gains, GE's merger and acquisition activity intensified. For example, in 1994 the company offered a $2.2 billion bid for Kemper Corp., a diversified insurance and financial services company (it retracted the bid in 1995). GE's sales from services as a percentage of total revenues increased from 30 percent in 1988 to nearly 45 percent in 1994, and neared 60 percent by 1996. The troubled Kidder Peabody unit remained a drag on GE's services operations, leading to the company's late 1994 decision to liquidate the unit. As part of the liquidation, GE sold some Kidder Peabody assets and operations to Paine Webber Group Inc. for $657 million.

In contrast to its service businesses, GE's total manufacturing receipts remained stagnant at about $35 billion. Nevertheless, restructuring was paying off in the form of fat profit margins in many of its major product divisions. Importantly, GE made significant strides with its Aircraft Engine Group. Sales fell from $8 billion in 1991 to less than $6 billion in 1995, but profit margins rose past 18 percent after dipping to just 12 percent in 1993. Reflective of restructuring efforts in other GE divisions, the company accomplished the profit growth by slashing the engineering workforce from 10,000 to 4,000 and reducing its overall Aircraft Engine Group payroll by about 50 percent, among other cost-cutting moves.

Despite a global economic downturn in the early 1990s, GE managed to keep aggregate sales from its technology, service, and manufacturing operations stable at about $60 billion annually. More importantly, net income surged steadily from $3.9 billion in 1989 to $5.9 billion in 1994, excluding losses in the latter year from Kidder Peabody operations. In 1994, in fact, General Electric was the most profitable of the largest 900 U.S. corporations, and was trailed by General Motors, Ford, and Exxon. Revenues reached $70 billion by 1995, the same year that the company's market value exceeded $100 billion for the first time.

The late 1990s saw General Electric reach a number of milestones. In 1996 the company celebrated its 100th year as part of the Dow Jones Index; GE was the only company remaining from the original list. That year, NBC joined with Microsoft Corporation in launching MSNBC, a 24-hour cable television news channel and Internet news service. Overall revenues exceeded the $100 billion mark for the first time in 1998, while the continuing stellar growth at GE Capital led that unit to generate nearly half of GE's revenues by the end of the decade.

Acquisitions in the late 1990s centered on two of the company's growth initiatives: services and globalization. In 1996 the GE Appliances division acquired a 73 percent interest in DAKO S.A., the leading manufacturer of gas ranges in Brazil. GE Capital Services expanded in Japan through the 1996 purchase of an 80 percent stake in Marubeni Car System Co., an auto leasing firm; the 1998 acquisitions of Koei Credit and the consumer finance business of Lake Corporation; and the 1998 formation of GE Edison Life following the purchase of the sales operations of Toho Mutual Life Insurance, which made GE Capital the first foreign company involved in the Japanese life insurance market. In early 1999 GE Capital made its largest deal in Japan to date with the purchase of the leasing business of Japan Leasing Corporation, a business with $7 billion in leasing assets. Then in late 1999 GE Capital agreed to purchase the remaining assets of Toho Mutual for ¥240 billion ($2.33 billion); Toho had collapsed during 1999 after suffering huge losses from the thousands of old, unprofitable policies in its portfolio, and a large portion of its liabilities were to be covered by Japan's life insurance association. Expansion also continued in Europe for GE Capital, highlighted by the 1997 acquisition of Woodchester, one of the largest financial services companies in Ireland. Overall, GE spent some $30 billion during the 1990s in completing more than 130 European acquisitions.

Under Welch's leadership, General Electric in the late 1990s also adopted "six sigma," a quality control and improvement initiative pioneered by Motorola, Inc. and AlliedSignal Inc. The program aimed to cut costs by reducing errors or defects. GE claimed that by 1998 six sigma was yielding $1 billion in annual savings. The company also continued to restructure as necessary, including taking a $2.3 billion charge in late 1997 to close redundant facilities and shift production to cheaper labor markets. During 1999 General Electric adopted a fourth growth initiative, e-business (globalization, services, and six sigma being the other three). Like many longstanding companies, GE reacted cautiously when the Internet began its late 1990s explosion. But once he was convinced of the new medium's potential, Welch quickly adopted e-commerce as a key to the company's future growth. Among the early ventures was a plan to begin selling appliances through Home Depot, Inc.'s web site, a move aimed at revitalizing lagging appliance sales.

In late 1999 Welch announced that he planned to retire in April 2001, but he did not name a successor. At the time, General Electric was one of the world's fastest growing and most profitable companies, and boasted a market capitalization of $505 billion, second only to Microsoft Corporation. Revenues for 1999 increased 11 percent to $111.63 billion while net income rose 15 percent to $10.72 billion. These figures also represented huge gains since Welch took over in 1981, when the company posted profits of $1.6 billion on sales of $27.2 billion.

Welch was not done yet, however. In October 2000 he swooped in to break up a planned $40 billion merger of United Technologies Corporation and Honeywell International Inc. The Honeywell board accepted GE's $45 billion bid, which was set to be the largest acquisition in the company's history. Honeywell was coveted for its aerospace unit, a $9.9 billion business involved in flight-control systems, onboard environmental controls, and repair services. The addition of this unit was expected to significantly boost the GE Aircraft Engines unit, creating a global aerospace giant. Welch agreed to stay on at General Electric through the end of 2001 in order to see the acquisition through to fruition. He did, however, name a successor soon after this deal was announced. In November 2000 Jeffrey R. Immelt won the succession battle and was named president and chairman-elect. Immelt, who joined GE in 1982, had most recently served as president and CEO of GE Medical Systems, a unit with revenues of $12 billion. Immelt's two chief rivals in the race to become only the ninth CEO in GE's long history, W. James McNerney Jr., head of GE Aircraft Engines, and Robert L. Nardelli, head of GE Power Systems, soon left the company to become CEOs of 3M Company and Home Depot, respectively.

Rather than serving as a capstone for a much admired reign of leadership, the Honeywell deal instead provided a sour ending for the Welch era. In the summer of 2001 the European Commission blocked the deal on antitrust grounds as 11th-hour negotiations between the European regulators and GE executives broke down. Welch finally retired soon thereafter, with Immelt taking over as chairman and CEO in September 2001.

Meanwhile, one last major deal was initiated prior to the leadership handover. In July 2001 General Electric's GE Capital unit agreed to pay $5.3 billion for Heller Financial Inc., a global commercial finance company based in Chicago that had total assets of about $19.5 billion. This deal, the second largest in GE history, behind only the 1986 deal for RCA, was consummated in October 2001. Also during 2001, GE Lighting had the largest product launch in its history when it introduced the GE Reveal line of light bulbs, which were touted as providing "a cleaner, crisper light" because the bulbs filtered out the duller yellow rays commonly produced by standard incandescent light bulbs. GE began feeling the effects of the economic downturn that year as revenues fell nearly 3 percent, to $125.68 billion; profits nevertheless increased 7.5 percent, reaching $13.68 billion, though that was a far cry from the yearly 13 to 15 percent increases that Wall Street came to expect from GE during the Welch era.

Immelt began to place his imprint in earnest on GE in 2002 through major restructurings and several significant acquisitions. Midyear he launched a reorganization of GE Capital. The financial services unit was divided into four separate units to streamline management, increase oversight, and improve transparency. The new units were: GE Commercial Finance, GE Consumer Finance, GE Equipment Management (involved in equipment leasing and loans), and GE Insurance. Also during 2002, the GE Appliances and GE Lighting units were combined into a new GE Consumer Products unit. On the acquisitions front, NBC widened its media holdings through the April 2002 acquisition of Hialeah, Florida-based Telemundo Communications Group Inc. for $2.7 billion and the $1.25 billion purchase of the Bravo cable network, completed in December of that year. Telemundo owned the second largest Spanish-language television network, as well as nine U.S. TV stations and the leading TV station in Puerto Rico. NBC hoped to tap into the growing Hispanic market via the deal. Bravo was known for its intelligent, arts-oriented programming such as Inside the Actors Studio, and it provided NBC with its first entertainment-oriented cable property. Also during 2002, GE Specialty Materials acquired BetzDearborn, a leading maker of water treatment chemicals, from Hercules Inc. for $1.8 billion. In addition, GE Industrial Systems spent about $777 million for Interlogix, Inc, an Austin, Texas-based manufacturer of electronic security products and systems for commercial, industrial, and residential use. All told, General Electric spent approximately $9 billion on industrial acquisitions alone during 2002. Concerns about whether the company could continue its stellar earnings performance and about its accounting practices sent GE's stock sharply lower in 2002. The stock ended the year trading at $24.35 per share, less than half of the high price for 2001. Once again, profits rose modestly, to $14.12 billion, or about 3 percent.

Taking advantage of the economic downturn to acquire desirable assets from distressed sellers, GE's deal-making appetite grew only larger in 2003. That year was the company's biggest acquisition year yet, with deals worth a collective $30 billion either completed or announced. In August the company agreed to buy Transamerica Finance Corporation's commercial lending business from Aegon N.V. of The Netherlands for $5.4 billion. The deal, which added about $8.5 billion in assets to the GE Commercial Finance unit, closed in January 2004. Also during the summer of 2003 GE sold three of its slower growing insurance businesses: Financial Guaranty Insurance Co., Tokyo-based GE Edison Life Insurance Co., and GE's U.S.-based auto and homeowners insurance unit. About $4.5 billion was raised through these divestments.

As part of its effort to shift emphasis to higher growth fields, General Electric completed two significant acquisitions in healthcare. In October 2003, Instrumentarium Corp. was acquired for $2.3 billion. Based in Finland, Instrumentarium was a major medical-equipment maker with a product line that featured devices for anesthesia, critical care, and patient monitoring. That same month, GE agreed to buy Amersham plc, a British firm specializing in diagnostics agents used during scans of the body for disease, gene-sequencing tools, and protein separation for high-tech drug development. Consummated in April 2004 and valued at about $9.5 billion, the purchase of Amersham stood, very briefly, as the largest acquisition in General Electric history. Following the Amersham acquisition, GE Medical Systems, now a $14 billion business, was renamed GE Healthcare. Based in the United Kingdom--the first GE unit to be headquartered outside the United States--GE Healthcare was headed by Amersham's former chief executive, William Castell; Castell was also named a GE vice-chairman, the first outsider to be so named.

Meanwhile, also in October 2003, General Electric announced an even larger deal, a $14 billion acquisition of Vivendi Universal Entertainment (VUE), the U.S. unit of the French group Vivendi Universal S.A. Among VUE's assets were the Universal Pictures movie studio, the specialty film unit Focus Features, the Universal Television production outfit, cable channels USA Network and Sci-Fi Channel, and theme parks in California, Florida, Japan, and Spain. Upon completion of the deal in May 2004, NBC was merged with VUE to form NBC Universal, which was 80 percent owned by GE and 20 percent by Vivendi. This expansion into entertainment content mimicked earlier combinations involving the ABC and CBS television networks.

Continuing his transformative leadership, Immelt reorganized GE's 13 business units into 11 focused on specific markets and customers. The reorganization, effective at the beginning of 2004, brought similar businesses together in an effort to increase sales and cut costs. The most significant of the changes included combining the firm's aircraft engines business and its rail-related operations in a new GE Transportation unit; merging most of GE Industrial Systems with GE Consumer Products to form GE Consumer & Industrial, which focused on lighting products, appliances, and integrated industrial equipment, systems, and services; and forming GE Infrastructure from certain operations of GE Industrial Systems and GE Specialty Materials. Also in January 2004, GE continued disposing of its insurance operations. That month, General Electric launched an initial public offering (IPO) of about one-third of the stock of the newly formed Genworth Financial, Inc., which consisted of the bulk of GE's life and mortgage insurance businesses. The IPO was planned for completion by mid-2004, after which GE planned to make Genworth fully independent within three years. What was left of GE Insurance was mainly its reinsurance business, which was long rumored to be another candidate for divestment.

Overall, through the myriad moves engineered during just a few years in charge, Immelt was seeking to cut General Electric's reliance on financial services and mature industrial businesses in favor of such higher growth areas as healthcare and entertainment. He was also building operations in fast-growing economies such as China's. By 2005, GE was aiming to outsource $5 billion of parts and services from China and simultaneously grow sales in China to a like figure. Further divestments were also expected, and there had long been speculation that the slow-growing lighting and appliances businesses were prime candidates. Through initiatives such as these, Immelt hoped to return General Electric to double-digit earnings growth by 2005.

Principal Subsidiaries

American Silicones, Inc.; Bently Nevada, LLC; Caribe GE International Electric Meters Corp. (Puerto Rico); Cardinal Cogen, Inc.; Datex-Ohmeda, Inc.; Elano Corporation; GEAE Technology, Inc.; GE CGR Europe (France); GE Drives and Controls, Inc.; GE Druck Holdings Limited; GE Electric Canada, Inc.; GE Energy Europe, BV (Netherlands); GE Energy Parts Inc.; GE Energy Products, Inc.; GE Energy Services, Inc.; GE Energy Services-Dallas, LP; GE Engine Services Distribution, LLC; GE Engine Services, Inc.; GE Fanuc Automation Corporation (50%); GE Gas Turbines (Greenville) L.L.C.; GE Hungary Co., Ltd.; GE Interlogix, Inc.; GE Investment, Inc.; GE Keppel Energy Services Pte., Inc. (Singapore); GE Medical Global Technology Co., LLC; GE Medical Systems Information Technologies, Inc.; GE Medical Systems, Inc.; GE Packaged Power L.P.; GE Petrochemicals, Inc.; GE Plastic Finishing, Inc.; GE Plastics España ScPA (Spain & Canary Islands, Balearic Island); GE Plastics Pacific Pte. Ltd. (Singapore); GE Polymerland, Inc.; GE Power Systems Licensing Inc.; GE Quartz, Inc.; GE Silicones WV, LLC; GE Superabrasives, Inc.; GE Transportation Parts, LLC; GE Transportation Services, LLC; GE Transportation Systems Global Signaling, LLC; GEA Products LP; General Electric International (Benelux) BV (Netherlands); General Electric International, Inc.; Granite Services, Inc.; National Broadcasting Company; Nuclear Fuel Holding Co., Inc.; Nuovo Pignone Holding S.p.A. (Italy); OEC Medical Systems Inc.; PII Limited (U.K.); Reuter-Stokes, Inc.; Sensing Solutions, Inc.; Viceroy, Inc.; General Electric Capital Services, Inc.; General Electric Capital Corporation; GE Global Insurance Holding Corporation.

Principal Operating Units

GE Advanced Materials; GE Commercial Finance; GE Consumer Finance; GE Consumer & Industrial; GE Energy; GE Equipment Services; GE Healthcare; GE Infrastructure; GE Insurance; GE Transportation; NBC Universal (80%).

Principal Competitors

ABB Ltd.; ALSTOM; American International Group, Inc.; AREVA Group; BASF Aktiengesellschaft; CIGNA Corporation; CIT Group Inc.; Citigroup Inc.; AB Electrolux; General Motors Corporation; General Re Corporation; Halliburton Company; Honeywell International Inc.; Household International, Inc.; J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.; Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.; Maytag Corporation; MBNA Corporation; The News Corporation Limited; Robert Bosch GmbH; Rolls-Royce plc; Royal Philips Electronics N.V.; Siemens AG; Time Warner Inc.; Toshiba Corporation; Tyco International Ltd.; United Technologies Corporation; Viacom Inc.; The Walt Disney Company; Whirlpool Corporation.

Further Reading

Banks, Howard, "General Electric: Going with the Winners," Forbes, March 26, 1984, pp. 97+.

Berman, Dennis K., and Kathryn Kranhold, "GE to Pay $900 Million to Buy Bomb-Detection Firm InVision," Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2004, p. A6.

Bernstein, Aaron, Susan Jackson, and John Byrne, "Jack Cracks the Whip Again," Business Week, December 15, 1997, pp. 34-35.

Bongiorno, Lori, "Hot Damn, What a Year!," Business Week, March 6, 1995, pp. 98-100.

Brady, Diane, "The Education of Jeff Immelt," Business Week, April 29, 2002, pp. 80-84, 86-87.

------, "How GE Locked Up That Boeing Order," Business Week, August 9, 1999, pp. 72, 74-75.

------, "Will Jeff Immelt's New Push Pay Off for GE?," Business Week, October 13, 2003, pp. 94-96, 98.

Brady, Diane, and Kerry Capell, "GE Breaks the Mold to Spur Innovation," Business Week, April 26, 2004, p. 88.

Brown, Ken, and Kathryn Kranhold, "GE's Immelt Faces Hurdles After Acquisitions," Wall Street Journal, October 13, 2003, p. C1.

Byrne, John A., "'Jack': A Close-up Look at How America's #1 Manager Runs GE," Business Week, June 8, 1998, pp. 90-95, 98-99, 102, 104-06, 110-11.

Byrne, John A., and Jennifer Reingold, "Who Will Step into Jack Welch's Shoes?," Business Week, December 21, 1998, pp. 37-38.

Carley, William M., "Power Ranger: GE Taps Trains Chief in Effort to Shore Up Troubled Energy Unit," Wall Street Journal, May 6, 1996, pp. A1+.

Carlson, W. Bernard, Innovation As a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, 1870-1900, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 377 p.

Colvin, Geoffrey, "The Ultimate Manager," Fortune, November 22, 1999, pp. 185-87.

"A Conversation with Roberto Goizueta and Jack Welch," Fortune, December 11, 1995, pp. 96-99, 102.

Cox, James A., A Century of Light, New York: Benjamin, 1979, 224 p.

Curran, John, "GE Capital: Jack Welch's Secret Weapon," Fortune, November 10, 1997, pp. 116-20, 124, 126, 130, 132, 134.

Deogun, Nikhil, and Matt Murray, "GE Capital to Acquire Heller Financial," Wall Street Journal, July 30, 2001, p. A3.

Doherty, Jacqueline, "Turning on the Lights," Barron's, February 24, 2003, pp. 19+.

Farrell, John, "GE Cuts Number in Layoff Plans," Capital District Business Review, October 31, 1994, p. 5.

Finn, Edwin A., Jr., "General Eclectic," Forbes, March 23, 1987, pp. 74+.

Freudenheim, Milt, "GE, Seeking to Spur Growth, Will Sell Many Insurance Assets," New York Times, November 19, 2003, p. C1.

Gapper, John, and Dan Roberts, "Man of the Year: Jeffrey Immelt," Financial Times, December 27, 2003, p. 11.

"GE Monkeys with Its Money Machine," Fortune, February 21, 1994, p. 81.

"GE: Not Recession Proof, but Recession Resistant," Forbes, March 15, 1975, p. 26.

"General Electric: The Financial Wizards Switch Back to Technology," Business Week, March 16, 1981, pp. 110+.

Grant, Linda, "GE's 'Smart Bomb' Strategy," Fortune, July 21, 1997, pp. 109-10.

Griffiths, Dave, "GE + RCA = A Powerhouse Defense Contractor," Business Week, January 27, 1986, pp. 116+.

Grover, Ronald, and Mark Landler, "NBC Is No Longer a Feather in GE's Cap," Business Week, June 3, 1991, pp. 88+.

Hammond, John Winthrop, Men and Volts: The Story of General Electric, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1941, 436 p.

Harris, Marilyn A., et al., "Can Jack Welch Reinvent GE?," Business Week, June 30, 1986, pp. 62+.

"The Jack and Jeff Show Loses Its Lustre," Economist, May 4, 2002, pp. 57-59.

"Jack Welch's Lessons for Success," Fortune, January 25, 1993, p. 86.

Koenig, Peter, "If Europe's Dead, Why Is GE Investing Billions There?," Fortune, September 9, 1996, pp. 114-18.

Kranhold, Kathryn, "GE, amid Slow Growth, Streamlines," Wall Street Journal, December 5, 2003, p. A6.

------, "With New Chief, GE Healthcare Breaks Tradition," Wall Street Journal, April 8, 2004, pp. B1, B10.

Kranhold, Kathryn, and Charles Fleming, "GE Agrees to Pay Aegon $5.4 Billion for Finance Units," Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2003, p. A3.

Laing, Jonathan R., "Riding into the Sunset: Can Jack Welch's Successor at General Electric Hope to Inherit His Magic Touch?," Barron's, February 15, 1999, pp. 23-24, 26-27.

Lunsford, J. Lynn, and Kathryn Kranhold, "GE, Rolls-Royce Gain Boeing Deal," Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2004, pp. A3, A12.

McClenahen, John S., "CEO of the Decade," Industry Week, November 15, 1999, p. 38.

Miller, John Anderson, Men and Volts at War: The Story of General Electric in World War II, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1947, 272 p.

Mitchell, Russell, "Jack Welch: How Good a Manager?," Business Week, December 14, 1987, pp. 92+.

Moore, Pamela L., and Nanette Byrnes, "The Man Who Would Be Welch," Business Week, December 11, 2000, pp. 94-97.

Moore, Pamela L., et al., "GE-Honeywell: How Jack Stumbled," Business Week, April 16, 2001, p. 122.

Morrison, Ann M., "Trying to Bring GE to Life," Fortune, January 25, 1982, pp. 50+.

Murray, Matt, "GE Capital Is Split into Four Parts," Wall Street Journal, July 29, 2002, p. A3.

------, "GE Chairman Sets His Departure Date for 2001: Successor Remains Unclear," Wall Street Journal, November 3, 1999, p. B12.

------, "GE Whiz: For Welch's Successor, Filling Legend's Shoes Is Only One Challenge," Wall Street Journal, November 28, 2000, pp. A1+.

------, "Last Conglomerate: Can House That Jack Built Stand When He Goes?," Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2000, pp. A1+.

------, "Late to the Web, GE Now Views Internet As Key to New Growth," Wall Street Journal, June 22, 1999, p. B1.

Murray, Matt, et al., "Extended Tour: On Eve of Retirement, Jack Welch Decides to Stick Around a Bit," Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2000, pp. A1+.

Norman, James R., "General Electric Is Stalking Big Game Again," Business Week, March 16, 1987, pp. 112+.

O'Boyle, Thomas F., At Any Cost: Jack Welch, General Electric, and the Pursuit of Profit, New York: Knopf, 1998, 449 p.

Pare, Terence P., "GE As a Service Company," Fortune, April 18, 1994, p. 16.

------, "Jack Welch's Nightmare on Wall Street," Fortune, September 5, 1994, p. 40.

Peers, Martin, Bruce Orwall, and John Carreyrou, "It's Official: Vivendi, GE Make Deal," Wall Street Journal, September 3, 2003, p. A3.

Petre, Peter, "What Welch Has Wrought at GE," Fortune, July 7, 1986, pp. 42+.

Reich, Leonard S., "Lighting the Path to Profit: GE's Control of the Electric Lamp Industry, 1892-1941," Business History Review, summer 1992, pp. 305+.

Schatz, Ronald W., The Electrical Workers: A History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923-1960, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983, 279 p.

Sherman, Stratford P., "Inside the Mind of Jack Welch," Fortune, March 27, 1989, pp. 38+.

Silverman, Rachel Emma, "GE Goes Back to Future," Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2002, p. B1.

Slater, Robert, The New GE: How Jack Welch Revived an American Institution, Homewood, Ill.: Business One Irwin, 1993, 295 p.

Smart, Tim, "GE's Money Machine," Business Week, March 8, 1993, pp. 62+.

------, "Jack Welch's Cyber-Czar," Business Week, August 5, 1996, pp. 82-83.

------, "Jack Welch's Encore," Business Week, October 28, 1996, pp. 154-60.

------, "Just Imagine If Times Were Good," Business Week, April 17, 1995, pp. 78-79.

Smart, Tim, Pete Engardio, and Geri Smith, "GE's Brave New World," Business Week, November 8, 1993, pp. 64+.

Stewart, Thomas A., "GE Keeps Those Ideas Coming," Fortune, August 12, 1991, pp. 40+.

------, "See Jack. See Jack Run Europe," Fortune, September 27, 1999, pp. 124-27, 130, 132, 136.

Tichy, Noel M., and Stratford Sherman, Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will: How Jack Welch Is Making General Electric the World's Most Competitive Corporation, New York: Doubleday, 1993, 384 p.

Useem, Jerry, "It's All Yours, Jeff. Now What?," Fortune, September 17, 2001, pp. 64-68.

Vogel, Todd, "Big Changes Are Galvanizing General Electric," Business Week, December 18, 1989, pp. 100+.

Warner, Melanie, "Can GE Light Up the Market Again?," Fortune, November 11, 2002, pp. 108-10+.

Welch, Jack, with John A. Byrne, Jack: Straight from the Gut, New York: Warner, 2001, 479 p.

Wise, George, Willis R. Whitney, General Electric, and the Origins of U.S. Industrial Research, New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, 375 p.

— Dave Mote; Updated by David E. Salamie

"GE" redirects here. For other uses of "GE", see GE (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with the former British company General Electric Company.

General Electric Company

Type	Public
Traded as	NYSE: GE NASDAQ: GE Dow Jones Component S&P 500 Component Dow Jones Composite Component The Global Dow Component
Industry	Conglomerate
Founded	Schenectady, New York, U.S. (1892 (1892))
Founder(s)	Charles Coffin, Edwin Houston, Elihu Thomson, Thomas Edison
Headquarters	Fairfield, Connecticut, U.S.[1]
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Jeffrey Immelt (Chairman & CEO)
Products	Appliances, aviation, consumer electronics, electrical distribution, electric motors, energy, entertainment, finance, gas, healthcare, lighting, locomotives, oil, software, water, weapons, wind turbines
Revenue	US$ 150.211 billion (2010)[2]
Operating income	US$ 015.166 billion (2010)[2]
Net income	US$ 012.163 billion (2010)[2]
Total assets	US$ 751.216 billion (2010)[2]
Total equity	US$ 124.198 billion (2010)[2]
Employees	287,000 (2010)[2]
Subsidiaries	GE Capital, GE Energy, GE Home & Business Solutions, GE Technology Infrastructure, GE Aviation NBCUniversal (49%)[3]
Website	GE.com

Street entrance to GE Headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut

The original version of General Electric's circular logo and trademark. The trademark application was filed on July 24, 1899, and registered on September 18, 1900

GE Building in 30 Rock, New York City

General Electric Company (NYSE: GE), or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States.^[1][4] The company operates through four segments: Energy, Technology Infrastructure, Capital Finance and Consumer & Industrial.^[5][6]

In 2011, Fortune ranked GE the 6th largest firm in the U.S.,^[7] as well as the 14th most profitable.^[8] Other rankings for 2011 include #7 company for leaders (Fortune), #5 best global brand (Interbrand), #82 green company (Newsweek), #13 most admired company (Fortune), and #19 most innovative company (Fast Company).^[9]

Contents 1 History 1.1 Formation 1.2 Public company 1.3 RCA 1.4 Power generation 1.5 Computing 1.6 Acquisitions 2 Corporate affairs 2.1 CEO 2.2 Businesses 2.3 Corporate recognition and rankings 3 Recent controversies 4 Environmental record 4.1 Pollution 4.2 Environmental initiatives 5 Educational initiatives 6 Legal issues 7 Notable appearances in media 8 See also 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links 11.1 Video clips

History

Further information: General Electric timeline

Formation

By 1890, Thomas Edison had brought together several of his business interests under one corporation to form Edison General Electric. At about the same time, Thomson-Houston Electric Company, under the leadership of Charles Coffin, gained access to a number of key patents through the acquisition of a number of competitors. Subsequently, General Electric was formed by the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric of Schenectady, New York and Thomson-Houston Electric Company of Lynn, Massachusetts and both plants remain in operation under the GE banner to this day.^[10] The company was incorporated in New York, with the Schenectady plant as headquarters for many years thereafter. Around the same time, General Electric's Canadian counterpart, Canadian General Electric, was formed.

Public company

In 1896, General Electric was one of the original 12 companies listed on the newly formed Dow Jones Industrial Average and still remains after 115 years, the only one remaining on the Dow index.

23 Ton diesel electric locomotive made at the General Electric Corp. plant in Schenectady, New York

In 1911 the National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) was absorbed into General Electric's existing lighting business. GE then established its lighting division headquarters at Nela Park in East Cleveland, Ohio. Nela Park is still the headquarters for GE's lighting business. In 1935, GE was one of the top 30 companies traded at the London Stock Exchange.^[11]

RCA

Main article: Radio Corporation of America

The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was founded by GE in 1919 to further international radio. GE used RCA as its retail arm for radio sales from 1919, when GE began production, until separation in 1930.^[12] RCA would quickly grow into an industrial giant of its own.

Power generation

See also: GE Wind Energy

GE's long history of working with turbines in the power generation field gave them the engineering know-how to move into the new field of aircraft turbosuperchargers. Led by Sanford Alexander Moss, GE introduced the first superchargers during World War I, and continued to develop them during the Interwar period. They became indispensable in the years immediately prior to World War II, and GE was the world leader in exhaust-driven supercharging when the war started. This experience, in turn, made GE a natural selection to develop the Whittle W.1 jet engine that was demonstrated in the United States in 1941. Although their early work with Whittle's designs was later handed to Allison Engine Company, GE Aviation emerged as one of the world's largest engine manufacturers, second only to the well-founded, and older, British company; Rolls-Royce plc, which led the way in innovative, reliable and efficient, high-performance, heavy-duty, jet engine design and manufacture.

In 2002 GE acquired the wind power assets of Enron during its bankruptcy proceedings.^[13] Enron Wind was the only surviving U.S. manufacturer of large wind turbines at the time, and GE increased engineering and supplies for the Wind Division and doubled the annual sales to $1.2 billion in 2003.^[14] It acquired ScanWind in 2009.^[15]

Some consumers boycotted GE light bulbs, refrigerators and other products in the 1980s and 1990s to protest GE’s role in nuclear weapons production.^[16]

Computing

GE was one of the eight major computer companies through all of the 1960s — with IBM, the largest, called "Snow White" followed by the "Seven Dwarfs": Burroughs, NCR, Control Data Corporation, Honeywell, RCA, UNIVAC and GE.

GE had an extensive line of general purpose and special purpose computers. Among them were the GE 200, GE 400, and GE 600 series general purpose computers, the GE 4010, GE 4020, and GE 4060 real time process control computers, the Datanet 30 and Datanet 355 message switching computers (Datanet 30 and 355 were also used as front end processors for GE mainframe computers). A Datanet 500 computer was designed, but never sold.

In 1962, GE started developing its GECOS (later renamed GCOS) operating system, originally for batch processing, but later extended to timesharing and transaction processing. Versions of GCOS are still in use today.

In 1964–1969, GE and Bell Laboratories (which soon dropped out) joined with MIT to develop the pioneering and influential Multics operating system on the GE 645 mainframe computer. The project took longer than expected and was not a major commercial success, but it demonstrated important concepts such as single level store, dynamic linking, hierarchical file system, and ring-oriented security. Active development of Multics continued until 1985.

It has been said^{[by whom?]} that GE got into computer manufacturing because in the 1950s they were the largest user of computers outside of the United States federal government. However, in 1970, GE sold its computer division to Honeywell, exiting the computer manufacturing industry, though it retained its timesharing operations for some years afterwards. GE was a major provider of computer timesharing services, through General Electric Information Services (GEIS, now GXS), offering online computing services that included GEnie.

Acquisitions

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2009)

For a complete list of acquisitions and divestitures, see General Electric timeline

In 1986 GE reacquired RCA, primarily for the NBC television network (also parent of Telemundo Communications Group). The remainder was sold to various companies, including Bertelsmann (Bertelsmann acquired RCA Records) and Thomson SA which traces its roots to Thomson-Houston, one of the original components of GE.

Also in 1986, Kidder, Peabody & Co. a U.S.-based securities firm was sold to GE and following heavy losses was subsequently sold to PaineWebber in 1994.^[17]

In 2002 Francisco Partners and Norwest Venture Partners acquired a division of GE called GE Information Systems (GEIS). The new company, named GXS, is based in Gaithersburg, Maryland. GXS is a leading provider of B2B e-Commerce solutions. GE maintains a minority ownership position in GXS.

Also in 2002, GE bought wind turbine manufacturing assets of Enron Wind after the Enron scandals.^[18]

In 2004 GE bought 80% of Universal Pictures from Vivendi. Vivendi bought 20% of NBC forming the company NBCUniversal. GE then owned 80% of NBC Universal and Vivendi owned 20%. As of January 28, 2011 GE owns 49% and Comcast 51%.

In 2004 GE completed the spin-off of most of its mortgage and life insurance assets into an independent company, Genworth Financial, based in Richmond, Virginia.

Genpact formerly known as GE Capital International Services (GECIS) was established by GE in late 1997 as its captive India based BPO. GE sold 60% stake in Genpact to General Atlantic and Oak Hill Capital Partners in 2005 and hived off Genpact into an independent business. GE is still a major client to Genpact getting its services in customer service, finance, information technology and analytics.

GE Plastics was sold in 2007 to SABIC.

In May 2007, GE acquired Smiths Aerospace for $4.8 billion.

In May 2008, GE announced it was exploring options for divesting the bulk of its Consumer and Industrial business.

General Electric's Schenectady, New York facilities (including GE's original headquarters) are assigned the ZIP code 12345. (All Schenectady ZIP codes begin with 123, but no others begin with 1234.)

On December 3, 2009, it was announced that NBCUniversal will become a joint venture between GE and cable television operator Comcast. The cable giant will hold a controlling interest in the company, while GE retains a 49% stake and will buy out shares currently owned by Vivendi.^[19]

Vivendi will sell its 20% stake in NBCUniversal to GE for US$5.8 billion. Vivendi will sell 7.66% of NBCUniversal to GE for US$2 billion if the GE/Comcast deal is not completed by September 2010 and then sell the remaining 12.34% stake of NBCUniversal to GE for US$3.8 billion when the deal is completed or to the public via an IPO if the deal is not completed.^[20][21]

On March 1, 2010, General Electric (GE) announced that the company is planning to sell its 20.85% stake in Turkey-based Garanti Bank.^[22]

In August 2010, GE Healthcare signed a strategic partnership to bring cardiovascular Computed Tomography (CT) technology from start-up Arineta Ltd. of Israel to the hospital market.^[23]

In October 2010, General Electric acquired gas engines manufacture Dresser Inc. for a $3 billion deal and also bought a $1.6 billion portfolio of retail credit cards from Citigroup Inc. This is the first major deal since the start of the financial crisis.^[24]

On October 14, 2010, GE announced acquisition of data migration & SCADA simulation specialists Opal Software.^[25]

December 2010: For the second times of this year (after Dresser acquisition), General Electric Co. buy oil sector company British Wellstream Holding Plc. an oil drilling pipe maker for 800 million pounds ($1.3 billion).^[26]

February 2011: The company has agreed to buy the well-support division of John Wood Group Plc for about $2.8 billion. It is another aggressive moves recently of GE Oil & Gas made GE's acquisition was the largest of oil-service unit world wide in 2010.^[27]

March 2011: GE announced it has completed the acquisition of privately-held Lineage Power Holdings, Inc., from The Gores Group, LLC. ^[28]

GE Capital sold its $2 billion dollar Mexican assets to Santander for $162 million and exit the business in Mexico. Santander will additionally assume the portfolio debts of GE Capital in the country. The transaction will be finished at first half of 2011. GE Capital will focus in the core business and will shed its non-core assets.^[29]

Corporate affairs

Classic GE neon sign

GE is a multinational conglomerate headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut. Its New York main offices are located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Rockefeller Center, known as the GE Building for the prominent GE logo on the roof. NBC's headquarters and main studios are also located in the building. Through its RCA subsidiary, it has been associated with the Center since its construction in the 1930s.

The company describes itself as composed of a number of primary business units or "businesses." Each unit is itself a vast enterprise, many of which would, even as a standalone company, rank in the Fortune 500^{[citation needed]}. The list of GE businesses varies over time as the result of acquisitions, divestitures and reorganizations. GE's tax return is the largest return filed in the United States; the 2005 return was approximately 24,000 pages when printed out, and 237 megabytes when submitted electronically.^[30] The company also "spends more on U.S. lobbying than any other company."^[31]

In 2005 GE launched its "Ecomagination" initiative in an attempt to position itself as a "green" company. GE is currently one of the biggest players in the wind power industry, and it is also developing new environment-friendly products such as hybrid locomotives, desalination and water reuse solutions, and photovoltaic cells. The company "plans to build the largest solar-panel-making factory in the U.S.,"^[31] and has set goals for its subsidiaries to lower their greenhouse gas emissions.^[32]

On May 21, 2007, GE announced it would sell its GE Plastics division to petrochemicals manufacturer SABIC for net proceeds of $11.6 billion. The transaction took place on August 31, 2007, and the company name changed to SABIC Innovative Plastics, with Brian Gladden as CEO.

^[33]

CEO

Main article: Jeffrey R. Immelt

Jeffrey Immelt is the current chairman of the board and chief executive officer of GE. He was selected by GE's Board of Directors in 2000 to replace John Francis Welch Jr. (Jack Welch) following his retirement. Previously, Immelt had headed GE's Medical Systems division (now GE Healthcare) as its President and CEO.

His tenure as the Chairman and CEO started at a time of crisis — he took over the role on September 7, 2001^[34] four days before the terrorist attacks on the United States, which killed two employees and cost GE's insurance business $600 million — as well as having a direct effect on the company's Aircraft Engines sector. Immelt has also been selected as one of President Obama's financial advisors concerning the economic rescue plan.

Businesses

Main article: List of assets owned by General Electric

GE's divisions include GE Capital, GE Energy, GE Technology Infrastructure, and GE Home & Business Solutions

Through these businesses, GE participates in a wide variety of markets including the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity (e.g. nuclear, gas and solar), lighting, industrial automation, medical imaging equipment, motors, railway locomotives, aircraft jet engines, and aviation services. It co-owns NBCUniversal with Comcast. Through GE Commercial Finance, GE Consumer Finance, GE Equipment Services, and GE Insurance it offers a range of financial services as well. It has a presence in over 100 countries.

GE gauges to control a railway locomotive at a museum near Saskatoon, Canada^[35]

GE also produces General Imaging digital cameras.^[36] In 2010, General Imaging released the Bridge Camera GE X5 with 14MP and 15x optical zoom.^[37] In 2011, it is replaced by 16MP GE X500 with optional red color in Japan besides traditional black or white color in world wide.^[38]

Since over half of GE's revenue is derived from financial services, it is arguably a financial company with a manufacturing arm. It is also one of the largest lenders in countries other than the United States, such as Japan. Even though the first wave of conglomerates (such as ITT Corporation, Ling-Temco-Vought, Tenneco, etc.) fell by the wayside by the mid-1980s, in the late 1990s, another wave (consisting of Westinghouse, Tyco, and others) tried and failed to emulate GE's success.

It was announced on May 4, 2008 that GE would auction off its appliances business for an expected sale of $5–8 billion.^[39] However, this plan fell through as a result of the recession.

Corporate recognition and rankings

In 2011, Fortune ranked GE the 6th largest firm in the U.S.,^[7] as well as the 14th most profitable.^[8] Other rankings for 2011 include the following:^[9]

• #7 company for leaders (Fortune)
• #5 best global brand (Interbrand)
• #82 green company (Newsweek)
• #13 most admired company (Fortune)
• #19 most innovative company (Fast Company).

For 2010, GE's brand was valued at $42.8 billion.^[40] CEO Jeffrey Immelt had a set of changes in the presentation of the brand commissioned in 2004, after he took the reins as chairman, to unify the diversified businesses of GE. The changes included a new corporate color palette, small modifications to the GE Logo, a new customized font (GE Inspira), and a new slogan, "imagination at work" replacing the longtime slogan "we bring good things to life", composed by David Lucas. The standard requires many headlines to be lowercased and adds visual "white space" to documents and advertising to promote an open and approachable company. The changes were designed by Wolff Olins and are used extensively on GE's marketing, literature and website.

Recent controversies

During the 2011 Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant catastrophe it became public that the six reactors in the plant had been designed by General Electric and that critics had opposed GE's design as far back as 1972.^[41]

In March 2011, The New York Times reported that, despite earning $14.2 billion in worldwide profits, including more than $5 billion from U.S. operations, General Electric did not owe taxes in 2010. General Electric had a tax benefit of $3.2 billion. This same article also pointed out that GE has reduced its American workforce by one fifth since 2002.^[42]

In December 2011, the non-partisan organization Public Campaign criticized General Electric for spending $84.35 million on lobbying and not paying any taxes during 2008-2010, instead getting $4.7 billion in tax rebates, despite making a profit of $10.4 billion, laying off 4,168 workers since 2008, and increasing executive pay by 27% to $75.9 million in 2010 for the top 5 executives.^[43]

Environmental record

Pollution

GE has a history of some of its activities giving rise to large-scale air and water pollution. Based on year 2000 data,^[44] researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute listed the corporation as the fourth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with more than 4.4 million pounds per year (2,000 tons) of toxic chemicals released into the air.^[45] GE has also been implicated in the creation of toxic waste. According to EPA documents, only the United States Government, Honeywell, and Chevron Corporation are responsible for producing more Superfund toxic waste sites.^[46]

In 1983, New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York to compel GE to pay for the cleanup of what was claimed to be more than 100,000 tons of chemicals dumped (legally, at the time) from their plant in Waterford, New York.^[47] In 1999, the company agreed to pay a $250 million settlement in connection with claims it polluted the Housatonic River (Pittsfield, Massachusetts) and other sites with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and other hazardous substances.^[48]

From approximately 1947 to 1977, GE discharged as much as 1.3 million pounds of PCBs from its capacitor manufacturing plants at the Hudson Falls and Fort Edward upstate New York facilities into the Hudson River.^[49] GE fought a media and political battle to avoid cleaning up the river and countered that dredging the river would actually stir up PCBs.^[50] In 2002, GE was ordered to clean up a 40-mile (64 km) stretch of the Hudson River it had contaminated.^[51]

In 2003, acting on concerns that the plan proposed by GE did not "provide for adequate protection of public health and the environment," the United States Environmental Protection Agency issued a unilateral administrative order for the company to "address cleanup at the GE site" in Rome, Georgia, also contaminated with PCBs.^[52]

The nuclear reactors involved in the 2011 crisis at Fukushima I in Japan are GE designs,^[53] and the architectural designs were done by Ebasco,^[54] formerly owned by GE. Concerns over the design and safety of these reactors were raised as early as 1975.^[55]

Environmental initiatives

On June 6, 2011, GE announced that it has licensed solar thermal technology from California-based eSolar for use in power plants that use both solar and natural gas.^[56]

On May 26, 2011, GE unveiled its EV Solar Carport, a carport that incorporates solar panels on its roof, with electric vehicle charging stations under its cover.^[57]

In May 2005 GE announced the launch of a program called "Ecomagination," intended, in the words of CEO Jeff Immelt "to develop tomorrow's solutions such as solar energy, hybrid locomotives, fuel cells, lower-emission aircraft engines, lighter and stronger durable materials, efficient lighting, and water purification technology”.^[58] The announcement prompted an op-ed piece in The New York Times to observe that, "while General Electric's increased emphasis on clean technology will probably result in improved products and benefit its bottom line, Mr. Immelt's credibility as a spokesman on national environmental policy is fatally flawed because of his company's intransigence in cleaning up its own toxic legacy."^[59]

GE has said that it will invest $1.4 billion in clean technology research and development in 2008 as part of its Ecomagination initiative. As of October 2008, the scheme had resulted in 70 green products being brought to market, ranging from halogen lamps to biogas engines. In 2007, GE raised the annual revenue target for its Ecomagination initiative from $20 billion in 2010 to $25 billion following positive market response to its new product lines.^[60] In 2010, GE continued to raise its investment by adding $10 billion into Ecomagination over the next five years.^[61]

GE (General Electric) Energy's renewable energy business has expanded greatly, to keep up with growing U.S. and global demand for clean energy. Since entering the renewable energy industry in 2002, GE has invested more than $850 million in renewable energy technology. In August 2008 it acquired Kelman Ltd,^[62] a Northern Ireland company specializing in advanced monitoring and diagnostics technologies for transformers used in renewable energy generation, and announced an expansion of its business in Northern Ireland in May 2010.^[63] In 2009, GE's renewable energy initiatives, which include solar power, wind power and GE Jenbacher gas engines using renewable and non-renewable methane-based gases,^[64] employ more than 4,900 people globally and have created more than 10,000 supporting jobs.^[65]

GE Energy and Orion New Zealand Limited (Orion) have announced implementation of the first phase of a GE network management system to help improve power reliability for customers. GE's ENMAC Distribution Management System is the foundation of Orion's initiative. The system of smart grid technologies will significantly improve the network company's ability to manage big network emergencies and help it to restore power faster when outages occur.

GE unveiled a 40W replacement Energy Smart LED bulb, to be available late 2010 or early 2011. The company claims that the new LED bulb will provide a 77% energy savings and produce nearly the same light output as a 40W incandescent bulb, while lasting more than 25 times as long.^[66]

Educational initiatives

GE Healthcare is collaborating with The Wayne State University School of Medicine and the Medical University of South Carolina to offer an integrated radiology curriculum during their respective MD Programs led by investigators of the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in Microgravity study.^[67] GE has donated over one million dollars of Logiq E Ultrasound equipment to these two institutions.^[68]

Legal issues

On August 4, 2009 the SEC fined General Electric $50 million for breaking accounting rules in two separate cases, misleading investors into believing GE would meet or beat earnings expectations.^[69]

GE has faced criminal action regarding its defense related operations. GE was convicted in 1990 of defrauding the US Department of Defense, and again in 1992 on charges of corrupt practices in the sale of jet engines to Israel.^[70]

Notable appearances in media

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (May 2010)

GE was the focus of a 1991 short subject Academy Award-winning documentary, Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons, and Our Environment,^[71] that juxtaposed GE's "We Bring Good Things To Life" commercials with the true stories of workers and neighbors whose lives have been affected by the company's activities involving nuclear weapons.^[72]

In the early 1950s Kurt Vonnegut was a writer for General Electric. A number of his novels and stories (notably Cat's Cradle) refer to the fictional city of Ilium, which appears to be loosely based on Schenectady, New York.^{[citation needed]} The Ilium Works is the setting for the short story "Deer in the Works".

The NBC sitcom 30 Rock is set at the NBC Studios in the GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Center (hence the title). All characters in the main cast are NBC (and therefore GE) employees, and one character, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is portrayed as having risen through the ranks of GE management to become Vice President of NBC's East Coast operations through the company's microwave oven division.

See also

Companies portal

• Edison Engineering Development Program
• GE Aviation
• GE Building
• GE Capital Finance
• GE Energy
• GE Home & Business Solutions
• GE Global Research
• GE Technology Infrastructure
• Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, Schenectady, NY
• List of assets owned by General Electric
• Phoebus cartel
• Top 100 US Federal Contractors

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "GE Fact Sheet: Businesses, Locations, Awards, Leadership". GE company website. http://www.ge.com/company/factsheets/corporate.html. Retrieved May 25, 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "2010 Form 10-K, General Electric Company". U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/40545/000119312511047479/d10k.htm#tx37537_11. 
3. ^ "NBC Universal Transaction – A Comcast-GE Joint Venture". Comcast. http://www.comcast.com/nbcutransaction/. 
4. ^ "Company Search, EDGAR System, Securities and Exchange Commission". http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000040545&owner=include&count=40. Retrieved December 22, 2009. 
5. ^ "GE Fact Sheet: Businesses, Locations, Awards, Leadership". General Electric. http://www.ge.com/company/factsheets/corporate.html. Retrieved May 10, 2011. 
6. ^ Wald, Matthew L.. "General Electric Company". The New York Times. http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/general_electric_company/index.html. Retrieved May 10, 2011. 
7. ^ ^{a b} "Fortune 500: GE". Fortune. 2011. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/snapshots/170.html. Retrieved 17 December 2010. 
8. ^ ^{a b} "Fortune 20 most profitable companies: IBM". Fortune. 2011. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/fortune/1104/gallery.fortune500_most_profitable.fortune/14.html. Retrieved 17 December 2010. 
9. ^ ^{a b} "GE rankings". Ranking the Brands. http://rankingthebrands.com/Brand-detail.aspx?brandID=82. Retrieved 17 December 2010. 
10. ^ "Thomas Edison & GE". GE company web site. http://www.ge.com/company/history/edison.html. Retrieved December 22, 2009. 
11. ^ FT.com / FT Magazine — The FT30 and how industry has changed
12. ^ Mahon, Morgan E. A Flick of the Switch 1930–1950 (Antiques Electronics Supply, 1990), p.86.
13. ^ "GE Completes Enron Wind Acquisition; Launches GE Wind Energy". Business Wire. May 10, 2002. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_2002_May_10/ai_85689772/. Retrieved August 9, 2010. 
14. ^ Fairly, Peter. The Greening of GE IEEE Spectrum, July 2005. Retrieved: November 6, 2010.
15. ^ Arnott, Sarah (March 26, 2010). "GE to build £99m UK wind turbine plant". The Independent (UK). http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ge-to-build-16399m-uk-wind-turbine-plant-1928159.html. Retrieved December 20, 2010. 
16. ^ Global Corruption Report 2009, Corruption and the Private Sector Transparency International 2009 page 148 (English)
17. ^ "Kidder, Peabody & Co.". Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidder,_Peabody_%26_Co.. 
18. ^ Murphy, Dennis. GE completes Enron Wind acquisition; Launches GE Wind Energy Desert Sky Wind Farm, May 10, 2002. Retrieved: May 1, 2010.
19. ^ Goldman, Davis; Pepitone, Julianne (December 3, 2009). "GE, Comcast announce joint NBC deal". CNNMoney.com. http://money.cnn.com/2009/12/03/news/companies/comcast_nbc/index.htm. Retrieved December 22, 2009. 
20. ^ "Vivendi to Sell its Stake in NBCUniversal for US$5.8 billion". Vivendi SA. December 3, 2009. http://www.vivendi.fr/vivendi/Nouvel-article,5902. Retrieved December 22, 2009. 
21. ^ "Vivendi To Sell 20% Stake In NBCU To GE For $5.8 Bln". The Wall Street Journal. December 3, 2009. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aMoJZHPclWnY. Retrieved December 22, 2009. 
22. ^ "General Electric to sell stake in Garanti Bank". March 1, 2010. http://www.newstatesman.com/banking-and-insurance/2010/03/garanti-bank-turkey-stake. Retrieved March 2, 2010. 
23. ^ "GE to get its heart tech from Israel". August 1, 2010. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/healthcare/ge-to-get-its-heart-tech-from-israel/3950. Retrieved August 21, 2010. 
24. ^ Comcast.net — GE posts sales slump, rattles recovery hopes
25. ^ "GE Acquires Opal Software — Strengthens Smart Grid Software Portfolio". GE. http://www.genewscenter.com/content/Detail.aspx?ReleaseID=11178&NewsAreaID=2. Retrieved October 19, 2010. 
26. ^ NewsDaily: GE to buy UK oil pipe maker Wellstream for $1.3 billion reuters.com
27. ^ Businessweek.com
28. ^ Businesswire.com
29. ^ GE Capital sells Mexican assets to Santander | Finance News
30. ^ "IRS e-file Moves Forward; Successfully Executes Electronic Filing of Nation's Largest Tax Return" (Press release). United States Department of the Treasury— Internal Revenue Service. May 31, 2006. http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=157845,00.html. Retrieved February 1, 2007. 
31. ^ ^{a b} Carney, Timothy (2011-04-07) Want to know how GE paid $0 income taxes? Think green., Washington Examiner
32. ^ "GE Launches Ecomagination to Develop Environmental Technologies; Company-Wide Focus on Addressing Pressing Challenges" (Press release). General Electric. May 9, 2005. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20050509005663/en. Retrieved January 15, 2007. ^{[dead link]}
33. ^ Deutsch, Claudia (May 22, 2007). "General Electric to Sell Plastics Division". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/business/22plastics.html?_r=1. Retrieved December 25, 2009. 
34. ^ "Jeff Immelt, CEO". Company Biography. General Electric. http://www.ge.com/company/leadership/ceo.html. Retrieved December 25, 2009. 
35. ^ "Welcome to Saskrailmuseum.org". Contact Us. September 11, 2008. http://www.saskrailmuseum.org/. Retrieved October 3, 2008. 
36. ^ VIDEO – General Imaging's blink detection cameras | TG Daily
37. ^ Walmart.com: GE X5 Black 14MP Digital Camera w/ 15x Optical Zoom, 2.7" LCD: Digital Cameras
38. ^ By metzae. "GE X500 Power Pro "bridge" DSLR camera Added a New Color". Dandy Gadget. http://dandygadget.com/2011/04/19/ge-x500-power-pro-bridge-dslr-camera-added-a-new-color/. Retrieved 2011-12-11. 
39. ^ "GE confirms it's exiting appliance business". MSNBC. May 16, 2008. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24630072. Retrieved December 25, 2009. 
40. ^ "Best Global Brands Ranking for 2010". Interbrand. http://www.interbrand.com/en/best-global-brands/best-global-brands-2008/best-global-brands-2010.aspx. Retrieved 15 February 2011. 
41. ^ "Design of G.E.'s Mark 1 Nuclear Reactors Shows Weaknesses". The New York Times. March 15, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=general%20electric&st=cse. 
42. ^ Kocieniewski, David (March 24, 2011). "G.E.'s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?scp=2&sq=ge&st=cse. 
43. ^ Portero, Ashley. "30 Major U.S. Corporations Paid More to Lobby Congress Than Income Taxes, 2008-2010". International Business Times. Archived from the original on 26 December 2011. http://www.webcitation.org/64D9GyQG0. Retrieved 26 December 2011. 
44. ^ Political Economy Research Institute Toxic 100 Corporate Toxics Information Project Technical Notes. Retrieved November 9, 2007.
45. ^ Political Economy Research Institute
46. ^ EPA Document Lists Firms Tied to Superfund Sites The Center for Public Integrity
47. ^ The Region; G.E. Plant Accused Of Water Pollution", The New York Times, January 21, 1983
48. ^ GE agrees to $250 million Settlement to Clean Up PCBs in Housatonic River, Department of Justice news release, October 7, 1999
49. ^ Hudson River PCBs
50. ^ Historic Hudson River Cleanup to Begin After Years of Delay, But Will General Electric Finish the Job? Under the EPA's unusual agreement with General Electric, the company could escape full responsibility for cleaning up the toxic mess it made in the Hudson River
51. ^ Old Questions Linger as New PCB Cleanup Starts The New York Times May 1, 2007
52. ^ EPA issues unilateral administrative order to General Eletric Company in Rome, Georgia United States Environmental Protection Agency
53. ^ General Electric-designed reactors in Fukushima have 23 sisters in U.S.
54. ^ Nuclear Reactor Maps: Fukushima-Daiichi
55. ^ Fukushima: Mark 1 Nuclear Reactor Design Caused GE Scientist To Quit In Protest
56. ^ Martin LaMonica, CNET. "GE invests in eSolar for combined solar, gas plants." Jun 6, 2011. Retrieved Jun 6, 2011.
57. ^ Candace Lombardi, CNET. "Solar power carport charges cars in Connecticut." May 26, 2011. Retrieved May 26, 2011.
58. ^ "Ecomagination: Inside GE's Power Play"
59. ^ "Talking Green, Acting Dirty." The New York Times June 12, 2005
60. ^ GE cleantech sales to top $17 billion this year
61. ^ VentureBeat, Camille Ricketts. "GE Pumps 10B More Into Green Technology R&D." June 24, 2010.
62. ^ GE Energy Acquires Kelman Limited
63. ^ GE to create 104 jobs in Lisburn
64. ^ GE's ecomagination™ Certified Clarke Energy Jenbacher Power Plant Commissioned at Australian Coal Mine to Help Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, 2008, www.gepower.com, Accessed April 14, 2011
65. ^ GE illustrates broad spectrum of alternative energy projects
66. ^ GE makes LED replacement for 40-watt bulb | Green Tech — CNET News
67. ^ Jultrasoundmet.org, A Pilot Study of Comprehensive Ultrasound Education at the Wayne State University School of Medicine
68. ^ [1]^{[dead link]}
69. ^ SEC Fines GE $50 million for Accounting Misdeeds
70. ^ Stevenson, Richard W. G.E. Guilty Plea in U.S. Aid to Israel, New York Times, July 23, 1992.
71. ^ Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons, and Our Environment
72. ^ Nuclear Weaponmakers Campaign – Corporate Accountability International – Challenging Abuse, Protecting People – Think Outside the Bottle – challenging the bottled water industry ...

Further reading

• Carlson, W. Bernard. Innovation as a Social Process: Elihu Thomson and the Rise of General Electric, 1870–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
• Woodbury, David O. Elihu Thomson, Beloved Scientist (Boston: Museum of Science, 1944)
• Haney, John L. The Elihu Thomson Collection American Philosophical Society Yearbook 1944.
• Hammond, John W. Men and Volts: The Story of General Electric, published 1941, 436 pages.
• Mill, John M. Men and Volts at War: The Story of General Electric in World War II, published 1947.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: General Electric

• General Electric corporate page
• Official site for GE Appliances, the corporation's leading consumer product
• SEC filings including 10-k
• Official site for SABIC Innovative Plastics.
• Historic Development of the GE.com website.
• Financial Times article on GE's effort to go green
• GE energy
• G.E. to Double Investments in Renewables to $4B
• USA Today article about GE's success at creating CEOs at large companies

Video clips

• GE Reports YouTube channel

Business data

• General Electric at Google Finance
• General Electric at Yahoo! Finance
• General Electric at Hoover's
• General Electric at Reuters
• General Electric SEC filings at EDGAR Online
• General Electric SEC filings at the Securities and Exchange Commission

v d e General Electric Subsidiaries and divisions Current GE Capital GE Capital Aviation Services GE Commercial Finance GE Energy Financial Services GE Money GE Capital Rail Services GE Capital Rail Services (Europe) Trailer Fleet Services GE Technology Infrastructure GE Aviation GE Aviation Systems GE Healthcare GE Transportation GE Energy GE Digital Energy GE Jenbacher GE Measurement & Control Solutions GE Oil & Gas GE Power & Water GE Wind Energy GE Home & Business Solutions GE Consumer & Industrial GE Intelligent Platforms GE Global Research Former and defunct Australian Guarantee Corporation1 Canadian General Electric1 Electric Bond and Share Company2 GE Americom2 GE Betz1 GE Capital IT Solutions2 GECIS2 GE Equipment Services1 GE Industrial1 GE Infrastructure1 GEIS2 Genesis Lease2 GE Security2 Genworth Financial2 Montgomery Ward2 Tungsram1 Whatman1 Joint ventures and shareholdings CFM International (50%) Engine Alliance (50%) GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (60%) GE Honda Aero Engines (50%) NBCUniversal, LLC (49%) Penske Truck Leasing TBS GB Products, services and brands Aircraft engines GEnie Locomotives Mazda Reciprocating engines Trivection oven Tungsram People Founders Thomas Edison Edwin J. Houston Elihu Thomson Other James Cash, Jr. Ann Fudge Susan Hockfield Jeffrey Immelt Andrea Jung Alan Lafley Rochelle Lazarus Sam Nunn Roger Penske Douglas A. Warner III Jack Welch Bob Wright Places and facilities GE Building General Electric Building General Electric Realty Plot General Electric Research Laboratory John F. Welch Technology Centre Nela Park Other Edison Engineering Development Program GE Inspira GE True General Electric Theater 1Now integrated into other GE divisions or business groupings 2Sold Category Commons

v d e NBCUniversal LLC A joint venture of Comcast (51%) and General Electric (49%) Company Officials Board of Directors Stephen B. Burke (CEO) · Brian Roberts · Michael Angelakis · Jeffrey Immelt · Keith Sherin Senior Corporate Executives Stephen B. Burke (CEO) · Matt Bond · Lynn Calpeter (CFO) · Steve Capus · Richard Cotton · Dick Ebersol · Patricia Fili-Krushel · Robert Greenblatt · Bonnie Hammer · Ted Harbert · Mark Hoffman · Paula Madison · Ron Meyer · Adam Miller · Jeff Shell · Page Thompson · Lauren Zalaznick Universal Studios Focus Features · Geneon Universal (80.1%)[nu 1] · Illumination Entertainment • United International Pictures[nu 2] · Universal Animation Studios · Universal Pictures · PlayBack · Universal Studios Home Entertainment · Working Title Films Universal Parks & Resorts Universal Studios Dubailand · Universal Studios Hollywood · Universal Orlando Resort (Universal Studios Florida · Islands of Adventure · Universal CityWalk) · Universal Studios Japan · Universal Studios Singapore · Universal Studios South Korea Broadcast TV assets NBC · NBC News · NBC Sports · Telemundo NBCUniversal Cable A&E Television Networks (15%) · Bravo · Chiller · Cloo · CNBC · CurrentTV  · E! · G4 (88%) · MSNBC · Mun2 · Oxygen · PBS Kids Sprout (part owner)  · ShopNBC (30%) · Style Network  · Syfy · Telemundo Puerto Rico · Universal HD · USA Network · The Weather Channel[nu 3] · Weatherscan[nu 3] NBC Sports Group Golf Channel · NBC Sports Network · Universal Sports (part owner)[nu 4] Comcast SportsNet Bay Area (45%)  · California  · Chicago (20%)  · Houston  · Mid-Atlantic  · New England  · Northwest  · Philadelphia  · SNY (8%)  · The Mtn. (50%) · CSS (50%) · Comcast Sports Southwest  · New England Cable News  · Comcast Network CNBC CNBC global channels CNBC · CNBC Africa · CNBC Asia · CNBC Europe · CNBC Latin America · CNBC World CNBC Europe branches Class CNBC (20%) · CNBC Africa · CNBC Arabiya (according to CNBC Europe) · CNBC-e · CNBC Nordic · TVN CNBC CNBC Asia branches CNBC-TV18 · CNBC Australia · CNBC Awaaz · CNBC Hong Kong · CNBC Pakistan · CNBC Singapore · Nikkei CNBC · SBS-CNBC Universal Networks International 13th Street Universal · Diva TV · Hallmark Channel (International) · KidsCo[nu 5] · Movies 24 · Steel[nu 6] · Studio Universal · Syfy · Universal Channel Syfy global channels Asia · Australia · Benelux · France · Germany · Japan · Latin America · Poland · Portugal · Romania · Russia · Spain · UK · US NBCUniversal Television Group NBC Studios · NBCUniversal Television Distribution · Telemundo of Puerto Rico Studios · Telemundo Television Studios · Universal Television NBC O&Os California Nonstop · KNBC · KNSD[nu 7] · KNTV · KXAS[nu 7] (DFW Nonstop) · WCAU (NBC Philadelphia Nonstop)  · WMAQ (Chicago Nonstop) · WNBC (New York Nonstop) · WRC (Washington Nonstop) · WTVJ · WVIT Telemundo O&Os KBLR · KDEN · KEJT-LP · KHRR · KNSO[nu 8] · KSTS · KTAZ · KTMD · KVDA[nu 8] · KVEA · KXTX · WKAQ · WNEU[nu 8] · WNJU · WSCV · WSNS ShopNBC O&Os WWDP Internet ventures: Hulu[nu 9] · iVillage · msnbc.com[nu 10] · Television Without Pity · DailyCandy · Fandango Other assets: EMKA, Ltd. · qubo[nu 11] · WSI Corporation[nu 3]  · International Media Distribution Defunct properties: NBC Weather Plus (2004–2008) · Trio (1997–2005) See also: Vivendi (former NBCUniversal stockholder and current parent company of Universal Music Group) · Comcast (telecommunications company that holds 51%) · General Electric (conglomerate that holds 49%) ^ Co-owned with Dentsu. ^ 50%, with Viacom's Paramount Pictures. ^ a b c Co-owned with Blackstone Group and Bain Capital. ^ minority share, InterMedia Partnersis the majority owner. ^ Co-owned with Corus Entertainment and Cookie Jar Group. ^ Co-owned with Mediaset. ^ a b The stations are co-owned with LIN TV in a joint venture (76% owned by NBC, 24% owned by LIN). ^ a b c The stations are owned by NBCUniversal, but are controlled by ZGS Broadcast Holdings. ^ Co-owned with News Corporation and The Walt Disney Company. ^ Co-owned with Microsoft in a joint venture (82% owned by NBC, 18% owned by Microsoft). ^ Co-owned with Corus Entertainment, Classic Media, Nelvana, Scholastic Books and ION Media Networks.

v d e Components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average Current 3M Alcoa American Express AT&T Bank of America Boeing Caterpillar Chevron Cisco Systems The Coca-Cola Company DuPont ExxonMobil General Electric Hewlett-Packard The Home Depot Intel IBM Johnson & Johnson JPMorgan Chase Kraft Foods McDonald's Merck & Co. Microsoft Pfizer Procter & Gamble The Travelers Companies United Technologies Corporation Verizon Communications Walmart The Walt Disney Company Selected former Altria Group American International Group American Tobacco Company Bethlehem Steel Citigroup Colorado Fuel and Iron Kodak General Foods General Motors Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company Honeywell International Harvester International Paper Johns Manville Nash Motors Navistar International North American Company Owens-Illinois Sears, Roebuck and Company Union Carbide United States Rubber Company U.S. Steel F. W. Woolworth Company

v d e Principal owners of the Houston Astros franchise Houston Colt .45's (1962-1964) Roy Hofheinz Houston Astros (1965-present) Roy Hofheinz General Electric & Ford Motor Company John McMullen Drayton McLane, Jr. Jim Crane

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)