It was headline news:
"Who is H. Lawrence Culp, GE’s new CEO?" by Tim Logan and Jon Chesto Globe Staff October 01, 2018
When it comes to public image, the new CEO of General Electric is no Jack Welch, the famed GE executive known for his outsize personality, brash reputation, and best-selling books.
Isn't he the one that cooked the books?
Nor is he Jeff Immelt, who made a public display of reimagining GE for the digital age, even moving its headquarters from Connecticut to Boston more than two years ago in search of new ideas for an old company.
Just melts your heart, doesn't it?
By contrast, Larry Culp is a nuts-and-bolts executive with little name recognition outside of the business world, noted for turning a little-known industrial conglomerate into a hugely profitable growth machine, and that may be precisely what GE needs as it struggles to revive a depressed stock price and figure out its future.....
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Related:
"General Electric’s new CEO could earn more than $21 million a year, as well as tens of millions more in company shares if he can significantly increase the struggling Boston company’s stock price. GE filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday that show Lawrence Culp’s annual pay will consist of a base salary of $2.5 million, a bonus of up to $3.75 million, and annual performance-stock awards valued at as much as $15 million. Culp also stands to gain a onetime stock award of 2.5 million to 7.5 million shares, if the company’s stock price closes on average at least 50 percent above its current level for 30 straight trading days before Sept. 30, 2022. Culp would get the highest grant under this onetime incentive — 7.5 million shares — if the stock price rises by at least 150 percent. GE’s stock closed at $12.66 a share on Thursday. GE’s board replaced John Flannery on Monday with Culp after a prolonged slump in the company’s stock price. GE said the terms of Flannery’s separation agreement have not yet been finalized."
Oh, yeah, him:
"GE ousts CEO John Flannery as it announces $23b writedown" by Jon Chesto and Larry Edelman Globe Staff October 01, 2018
Financial problems at General Electric Co. prompted the long-ailing company on Monday to tap the first outsider CEO in its 126-year history to lead yet another turnaround.
The Boston-based industrial conglomerate ousted John Flannery as chairman and chief executive after just 14 months, a dramatic and unexpected move aimed at reversing a deep slide in the company’s fortunes and restoring investors’ faith in a stock that lost roughly half its value during his tenure.
His replacement is H. Lawrence Culp Jr., the former head of Danaher Corp., who has been praised as one of the most successful CEOs in corporate America.
The biggest factor in Flannery’s sudden downfall was GE’s long-troubled power business. As part of the change in leadership, GE said it would take a massive writedown of the power unit — as much as $23 billion — to reflect its declining value as a business. GE also said it would fall short of its previously announced earnings forecast for the year.
Wall Street indicated that the change at the top outweighed the additional bad corporate news, pushing shares in the company up 7.1 percent on Monday, to close at $12.09 a share.
“GE did something unexpected, and the market applauded,” said Mark Williams, a finance professor at Boston University. “They fired an insider and hired an outsider. . . . We’ll look back on this as an inflection point. I think GE has finally gotten religion, that they’re in crisis and they have to change.”
They have $een the light.
Flannery, a 30-year GE veteran, had taken over the top job amid growing concern about predecessor Jeffrey Immelt’s radical attempts to transform the company for the Internet era. Immelt spent heavily on software and other digital initiatives, while doubling down on GE’s big power generation and oil and gas businesses. He relocated the company’s headquarters to Boston from suburban Fairfield, Conn., two years ago, a move that was hailed by local leaders as a confirmation of this region’s reputation as a hotbed for innovation, but Immelt lost the faith of many investors as costs climbed, profits fell, and the stock tumbled.
Why are they dragging God into this?
After his appointment, Flannery aggressively stepped up efforts to simplify GE’s sprawling corporate shape and trim expenses, but the century-old power business continued to suffer from a prolonged global downturn in demand for turbines fired by natural gas.
Many observers believe the $10.6 billion Immelt paid for Alstom’s power business in 2015 was too high, and the French business proved to be much tougher to integrate than expected. Revenue at GE’s power unit declined 19 percent in the second quarter of 2018 from a year earlier, while profit fell 58 percent.
In 2017, the power business had accounted for nearly a third of GE’s $122 billion in revenue.
Meanwhile, Flannery moved to spin out GE’s health care business, a subsidiary he is credited with turning around.
“When Flannery was CEO, he seemed to be doing a good, if depressing, job of finding all the problems but did not highlight the opportunities for growth, which is why anybody would want to buy the stock,” said Peter Cohan, a management expert who teaches at Babson College. “Flannery was Bad News Bear, but never came up with the other side of it.”
For now, at least, GE remains committed to separating its health care business as an independent company and fully divesting its majority stake in its oil-and-gas joint venture with Baker Hughes.
GE is also officially sticking with its plans for a new headquarters complex in Boston, though Flannery’s departure is bound to raise more questions.
The City of Boston pledged $25 million in tax breaks over 20 years to bring GE here, but the company needs to hire 800 employees in Boston by 2025 to fully benefit.
The commonwealth of Massachusetts provided $125 million in grants to help with the headquarters campus, and the two brick buildings are owned by a quasi-public agency, MassDevelopment, as a result.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Governor Charlie Baker said he’s not concerned about the latest changes.
“We did not write a big check to GE based on job projections or anything like that,” Baker said. “The company is still worth about $100 billion. It still has a huge footprint here in Massachusetts.”
It's a lemon, Chuck!
Culp’s experience reshaping a sprawling conglomerate probably appealed to GE’s board.
Not everyone was sold on the benefits of bringing in an outsider to steer the ship, however.
“Hitting the master reset button might be the best thing,” said Bill Aulet, a professor of entrepreneurship at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “The problem is, someone coming in from the outside, they would have to have the right skills but they also have to be a cultural match with the good people in the organization. That DNA match is very, very difficult.”
As if the GE culture is something that is alive!
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Now the person who pimped them asks is Boston a curse for GE?
She is also the new interim editorial editor (must be her handiwork).
I guess he won't be able to finish the job:
"GE pushes ahead on revamp with $1.05 billion sale of health IT businesses" by Richard Clough Bloomberg News April 02, 2018
NEW YORK — John Flannery’s reshaping of General Electric Co. is underway.
He started following through on Monday, when one of the company’s largest divisions, GE Healthcare, announced a deal to sell a trio of information-technology businesses to the private equity firm Veritas Capital. The $1.05 billion cash transaction is expected to close in the third quarter.
The revamp, along with cost cuts and culture change, is a pillar of Flannery’s bid to pull GE out of one of the deepest slumps in its 126-year history. The company’s stock has languished at the bottom of the Dow Jones industrial average for more than a year as GE grapples with cash-flow challenges and weak demand for industrial equipment.
It is no longer part of the Dow, which is one of its secrets to staying high.
If you underperform, they drop you.
While investors have pressed for dramatic changes, the midday announcement failed to lift GE’s stock. It fell 2.7 percent to close at $13.12 amid a broad market decline.
Veritas, which recently invested in Truven Health Analytics and Verscend Technologies, plans to buy GE Healthcare’s assets in ambulatory care management, enterprise financial management, and workforce management. The investment firm said it would work with GE executives to form a stand-alone business with the units.
The new company should benefit from an “urgent need to digitalize our health-care system,” Veritas CEO Ramzi Musallam said in the statement.
Health care has long drawn scrutiny from GE investors. The division, the company’s third-largest, with 2017 sales of $19 billion, is a solid cash generator and boasts high-growth markets such as life sciences, but some shareholders and analysts have argued that it doesn’t fit as well with GE’s primary business of making industrial equipment, such as jet engines and gas turbines.....
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Let's leave you with a $weet ta$te in your mouth:
"GE offers glimpse of its future Fort Point home" by Jon Chesto, Globe Staff August 22, 2018
If only the folks who toiled at New England Confectionery Co. in Fort Point a century ago could see their candy factory now.
They already had their last supper a while ago.
The two buildings on Necco Court are being renovated to be General Electric Co.’s new headquarters. The project will merge the two into one 95,400-square-foot structure, using a glass-enclosed lobby to integrate both buildings.
The complex will feature an open working environment, a roof deck on the sixth floor facing the skyline, a bistro on the first floor that will be open to the public, and two old pedestrian bridges that are being restored, one to connect the buildings and one to house work areas.
GE expects to relocate employees from nearby Farnsworth Street once construction is finished in mid-2019. However, the company is in the midst of a radical restructuring and has for now delayed plans for a 12-story tower next to the former Necco buildings.
“The one thing that absolutely has not changed is our commitment to Boston,” GE vice president Ann Klee said Tuesday during the first media tour of the construction site. “As GE is evolving, this is a great place for us, and will be for decades to come.”
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Related: Here’s a look at Amazon’s new building in Boston’s Seaport
The work finally started.
