Basically telling you that you don't matter anymore, dear American consumer. There is no more money in serving you with a rising standard of living and all the propaganda I grew up with.
"GE, home appliance pioneer, gives up on consumers" by Jonathan Fahey | Associated Press September 09, 2014
NEW YORK — General Electric, a household name for more than a century, is leaving the home.
The Fairfield, Conn., company is selling the division that invented the toaster in 1905 and now sells refrigerators, stoves, and laundry machines. GE wants to focus on building more-profitable industrial machines such as aircraft engines, locomotives, and turbines.
‘‘They are no longer going to be a consumer company,’’ said Andrew Inkpen, a professor at Thunderbird School of Global Management who studies GE.
GE said Monday it is selling the division to the Swedish appliance maker Electrolux for $3.3 billion. Electrolux will still sell GE brand appliances in an attempt to leverage the company’s long history. GE has sold consumer products for its entire 122 years, starting with the light bulb, invented by company founder Thomas Edison. But in the first half of this year, GE’s appliances and lighting division accounted for just 2 percent of the company’s profits.
The end of an era.
GE is the only remaining member of the first Dow Jones industrial average, calculated in 1896. As recently as 2004, it had the world’s largest market value. But since then, GE has frustrated shareholders. Its shares are 22 percent below where they were a decade ago. The Standard & Poor’s 500 is up 79 percent over that period.
GE got into businesses such as media and insurance because they promised new sources of profit, not because of any competitive advantage the company had. Investors found the structure unwieldy, though, and put their money elsewhere.
That seems so odd since "GE, the largest US company, has sparked national attention to corporate taxes because it paid no federal tax bill last year, even though it turned a $14.2 billion profit."
Not only that, they got a $3.2 billion refund -- and get to write the "lo$$es" off for the next twenty years.
Heavy exposure to commercial and residential mortgages through its finance division threatened GE’s existence during the financial crisis. It needed funds from a government liquidity program and a $3 billion investment from Warren Buffet to shore up its finances.
OMG, they FEASTED on another BAILOUT!
Now, GE wants to be only in businesses that can benefit from the company’s global scale, experience with complex projects, and technical ability.
Chief financial officer Jeff Bornstein said GE is becoming ‘‘less of a conglomerate and more of a global infrastructure company. That’s where we deliver our most value.’’
In July, GE spun off its credit card business as a new company, Synchrony Financial. In recent years, it has sold NBC Universal and its insurance operation and is shrinking its financial company, GE Capital.
In June, GE agreed to buy the energy and power generation operations Alstom, a French engineering company, for $17 billion. And it has spent $14 billion acquiring oil and gas-related companies.
Screw all the fart mist from global warmers. Sorry.
The strategy is clearer when one visits GE’s research and development campus near Albany, N.Y., where 2,000 people work on next-generation products. One team has been working for 28 years on ceramic that can withstand tremendous heat but won’t shatter; it will allow aircraft engines to run hotter and save fuel. A novel electric power transformer will help shrink the size and cost of underwater oil and gas pumping equipment and make offshore wind power less expensive.
Its appliance unit just did not have the global scale of such divisions. ‘‘It’s become harder and harder to tell the story about how the GE appliance business is aligned with General Electric Co.,’’ said Chip Blankenship, head of GE Appliances.
Doesn't make $ense. GE would seem to have an entire planet of consumers out there waiting to be lifted up. Isn't that what people in other countries want? Washing machines, refrigerators, and microwaves? A symbol of quality for 122 years? (Well, almost. They been putting out cheap crap lately).
Electrolux said the deal ‘‘takes our company to a new level in terms of global reach.” Electrolux also sells Frigidaire and Eureka products.
Oh, yeah, vacuum cleaners, too.
Based in Louisville, GE Appliances has 12,000 workers at nine factories. Blankenship said, ‘‘What I'm telling employees is that this transaction represents the best opportunity for our successful long-term growth, compared to standing still.’’
Ooooooh-kay.
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