The Fall of General Electric

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GE, the legendary bellwether American company, was founded by Thomas Edison in 1889. It was an original Dow Jones Industrial Average component, which represents the 30 largest stocks in the U.S. GE stayed on the Dow Jones from the early 1900’s until 2018 when it was abruptly removed. GE was always a large company, but Jack Welch who took over in 1981 brought General Electric into the stratosphere; he led GE from being the 9th largest company to the largest by the year 2000. Jeff Immelt took over in 2001—and had big shoes to fill. Early on, Immelt was a competent CEO, but over time he made a number of mistakes that cumulated to ruin GE’s once mythic image when it needed a bailout of sorts (from Buffett and sort of by the FDIC) during the financial crisis of 2008. After the financial crisis, with GE’s mythic image in a state of disrepair, Immelt tried to rebuild the company and made 4 key mistakes: 1) He sold NBC at a discounted price. 2) He heavily invested in oil companies 3) He sold the profitable GE Capital business at a large loss 4) He purchased Alstom a French Power company. Each of these decisions led to turmoil. In 2015, Immelt said GE would earn $2 in 2018. However, in 2018, GE lost money. In 2017, Immelt left the company, but GE’s new CEO John Flannery would last only a year—he was fired in 2018. Lawrence Culp, the former CEO of Danaher, took over in late 2018. He forecasted GE’s EPS to be less than 70 cents in 2019. Oh, how the might have fallen! GE is the tale of a CEO (Jeff Immelt) whose biggest mistake was listening to shareholders.