The major reason for General Electric’s numerous Sell-offs has been restructure the company and focus on a core industrial manufacturing base. Recently ousted CEO John Flannery planned to focus on GE’s large-scale and enterprise product divisions, such as aerospace, train and power manufacturing, as well as military contracting and (potentially) life sciences, and that plan appears to continue.
Whether that will succeed obviously remains to be seen, however, major investors remain skittish with firms such as J.P. Morgan continuing to rate it a “very expensive stock.” The relationship between the firm’s debt and stock buybacks remains worrisome, given the modern trend of stockholders enriching themselves at the expense of corporate viability, as does a continuing investigation by the Department of Justice into the remaining financial services assets.
The firm’s additional decisions to scale back research and development raises further concerns about its future-forward viability, as does the company’s change of leadership less than a year after appointing Flannery as CEO.
General Electric has embarked on a new era. After more than 100 years of constant growth fueled by mergers and acquisitions into almost every area of American business it has begun shrinking rapidly. The company’s new vision is to focus intently on a few core areas of its business. Whether that’s enough to help it recover from the recent years, or whether this will simply usher Thomas Edison’s company into irrelevancy, remains to be seen.
Based on the case study on GE and the current challenges company is facing, provide a critique paper including what you believe are the past shortfalls of GE Digital and what steps you suggest they take to turn around the company.
