Formation , aerial view, 1896 at 570 Lexington Avenue, New York During 1889,
Thomas Edison (1847–1931) had business interests in many electricity-related companies, including Edison Lamp Company, a lamp manufacturer in
East Newark, New Jersey;
Edison Machine Works, a manufacturer of
dynamos and large
electric motors in
Schenectady, New York; Bergmann & Company, a manufacturer of electric
lighting fixtures,
sockets, and other electric lighting devices; and Edison Electric Light Company, the
patent-holding company and financial arm for Edison's lighting experiments, backed by
J. P. Morgan (1837–1913) and the
Vanderbilt family.
Henry Villard, a long-time Edison supporter and investor, proposed to consolidate all of these business interests. The proposal was supported by
Samuel Insull - who served as his secretary and, later, financier - as well other investors. The consolidation did not involve all of the companies established by Edison; notably, the
Edison Illuminating Company, which would later become
Consolidated Edison, was not part of the merger. In 1880, Gerald Waldo Hart formed the American Electric Company of
New Britain, Connecticut, which merged a few years later with
Thomson-Houston Electric Company, led by
Charles Coffin. In 1887, Hart left to become superintendent of the Edison Electric Company. General Electric was formed through the 1892 merger of Edison General Electric Company and Thomson-Houston Electric Company with the support of Drexel, Morgan & Co. The General Electric business was incorporated in New York, with the Schenectady plant used as headquarters for many years thereafter. Around the same time, General Electric's Canadian counterpart,
Canadian General Electric, was formed. In 1893, General Electric brought
Charles Steinmetz on board through the acquisition of smaller New York company. A genius in both mathematics and electronics, he earned over 200 patents and proved a major force in advancing GE, recognized today in
Steinmetz's equation,
Steinmetz solids,
Steinmetz curves, the
Steinmetz equivalent circuit, and the
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers prestigious
IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award.
Public company In 1896, General Electric was one of the
original 12 companies listed on the newly formed
Dow Jones Industrial Average, where it remained a part of the index for 122 years, though not continuously. In 1900, GE bought the U.S. business of
Siemens-Halske. in a 1945 advertisement for a General Electric FM radio in
The Saturday Evening Post In 1911, General Electric absorbed the National Electric Lamp Association (NELA) into its lighting business. GE established its lighting division headquarters at
Nela Park in
East Cleveland, Ohio. The lighting division has since remained in the same location. During
World War I, GE's contributions to the American military included submarine motors, airplane compasses, winch drives for balloons,
telephone switchboards, and bomb-release mechanisms. This came after Young, while working with senior naval officers, purchased the
Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America, which was a subsidiary of the British company Marconi Wireless and Signal Company. In 1926, RCA co-founded the
National Broadcasting Company (NBC), which built two radio broadcasting networks. In 1930, General Electric was charged with antitrust violations and was ordered to divest itself of RCA.
Television In 1927,
Ernst Alexanderson of GE made the first demonstration of television broadcast reception at his
General Electric Realty Plot home at 1132 Adams Road in Schenectady, New York. On January 13, 1928, he made what was said to be the first broadcast to the public in the United States In 1965, the company expanded into cable with the launch of a franchise, which was awarded to a non-exclusive franchise in Schenectady through subsidiary General Electric Cablevision Corporation. On February 15, 1965, General Electric expanded its holdings in order to acquire more television stations to meet the maximum limit of the FCC, and more cable holdings through subsidiaries General Electric Broadcasting Company and General Electric Cablevision Corporation. The company also owned television stations such as KOA-TV (now
KCNC-TV) in Denver and WSIX-TV (later WNGE-TV, now
WKRN) in Nashville, but like WRGB, General Electric sold off most of its broadcasting holdings, but held on to the Denver television station until in 1986, when General Electric bought out
RCA and made it into an
owned-and-operated station by
NBC. It even stayed on until 1995 when it was transferred to a joint venture between
CBS and
Group W in a swap deal, alongside
KUTV in
Salt Lake City for longtime
CBS O&O in Philadelphia,
WCAU-TV.
Former General Electric-owned stations Stations are arranged in alphabetical order by state and
city of license. • (**) Indicates a station that was built and signed on by General Electric.
Radio stations Power generation Led by
Sanford Alexander Moss, GE moved into the new field of aircraft
turbosuperchargers. This technology also led to the development of industrial
gas turbine engines used for power production. GE introduced the first set of superchargers during
World War I and continued to develop them during the
interwar period.
Superchargers became indispensable in the years immediately before
World War II. GE supplied 300,000 turbosuperchargers for use in fighter and bomber engines. This work led the U.S. Army Air Corps to select GE to develop the nation's first jet engine during the war. 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. GE was ranked ninth among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. However, their early work with Whittle's designs was later handed to
Allison Engine Company. GE Aviation then emerged as one of the world's largest engine manufacturers, bypassing the British company
Rolls-Royce plc. Some consumers
boycotted GE light bulbs, refrigerators, and other products during the 1980s and 1990s. The purpose of the boycott was to protest against GE's role in
nuclear weapons production. In 2002, GE acquired the wind power assets of
Enron during its bankruptcy proceedings.
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. It acquired
ScanWind in 2009. In 2018, GE Power garnered press attention when a model 7HA gas turbine in Texas was shut down for two months due to the break of a
turbine blade. This model uses similar blade technology to GE's newest and most efficient model, the 9HA. After the break, GE developed new protective coatings and heat treatment methods. Gas turbines represent a significant portion of GE Power's revenue, and also represent a significant portion of the power generation fleet of several utility companies in the United States.
Chubu Electric of Japan and
Électricité de France also had units that were impacted. Initially, GE did not realize the turbine blade issue of the 9FB unit would impact the new HA units.
Computing GE was one of the eight major computer companies of the 1960s along with
IBM,
Burroughs,
NCR,
Control Data Corporation,
Honeywell,
RCA, and
UNIVAC. GE had a line of general purpose and special purpose computers, including the
GE 200,
GE 400, and
GE 600 series general-purpose computers, In 1956
Homer Oldfield was promoted to General Manager of GE's Computer Department. He facilitated the invention and construction of the
Bank of America ERMA system, the first computerized system designed to read magnetized numbers on checks. But he was fired from GE in 1958 by
Ralph J. Cordiner for overstepping his bounds and successfully gaining the ERMA contract. Cordiner was strongly against GE entering the computer business because he did not see the potential in it. In 1962, GE started developing its
GECOS (later renamed GCOS)
operating system, originally for
batch processing, but later extended to
time-sharing and
transaction processing. Versions of GCOS are still in use today. From 1964 to 1969, GE and
Bell Laboratories (which soon dropped out) joined with
MIT to develop the
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 concepts such as
single-level storage,
dynamic linking,
hierarchical file system, and
ring-oriented security. Active development of Multics continued until 1985. GE got into computer manufacturing because, in the 1950s, they were the largest user of computers outside the
United States federal government, However, in 1970, GE sold its computer division to
Honeywell, exiting the computer manufacturing industry, In 2000, when United Technologies Corp. planned to buy Honeywell, GE made a counter-offer that was approved by Honeywell. On July 3, 2001, the
European Union issued a statement that "prohibit the proposed acquisition by General Electric Co. of Honeywell Inc.". The reasons given were it "would create or strengthen dominant positions on several markets and that the remedies proposed by GE were insufficient to resolve the competition concerns resulting from the proposed acquisition of Honeywell". ,
Ohio Acquisitions and divestments In December 1985, GE reacquired the
RCA Corporation, primarily to gain ownership of the
NBC television network for $6.28 billion; this merger surpassed the
Capital Cities/ABC merger from earlier that year as the largest non-oil company merger in world business history. The remainder of RCA's divisions and assets were sold to various companies, including
Bertelsmann Music Group which acquired
RCA Records.
Thomson SA, which licensed the manufacture of RCA and GE branded electronics, traced 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 sold to
PaineWebber in 1994. In 1993, GE sold its
Aerospace business to
Martin Marietta. In 1997,
Genpact was founded as a unit of General Electric in
Gurgaon. The company was founded as GE Capital International Services (GECIS). In the beginning, GECIS created processes for outsourcing back-office activities for GE Capital such as processing
car loans and credit card transactions. It was an
experimental concept at the time and the beginning of the
business process outsourcing (BPO) industry. 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 today for services in customer service, finance, information technology, and analytics. In 2001, GE acquired Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo and incorporated it into its National Broadcasting Company, Inc. subsidiary. 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 provider of
business-to-business e-commerce solutions. GE maintains a minority stake in GXS. Also in 2002,
GE Wind Energy was formed when GE bought the
wind turbine manufacturing assets of Enron Wind after the
Enron scandals. In 2004, GE bought 80% of
Vivendi Universal Entertainment, the parent of
Universal Pictures from
Vivendi. Vivendi Universal was merged with NBC to form
NBCUniversal. GE then owned 80% of NBCUniversal and Vivendi owned 20%. 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. In May 2007, GE acquired
Smiths Aerospace for $4.8 billion. Also in 2007, GE Oil & Gas acquired Vetco Gray for $1.9 billion, followed by the acquisition of Hydril Pressure & Control in 2008 for $1.1 billion. GE Plastics was sold in 2008 to
SABIC (Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation). In May 2008, GE announced it was exploring options for divesting the bulk of its consumer and industrial business. On December 3, 2009, it was announced that NBCUniversal would become a joint venture between GE and cable television operator
Comcast. Comcast would hold a controlling interest in the company, while GE would retain a 49% stake and would buy out shares owned by Vivendi. Vivendi would sell its 20% stake in NBCUniversal to GE for US$5.8 billion. Vivendi would sell 7.66% of NBCUniversal to GE for US$2 billion if the GE/Comcast deal was 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 was completed or to the public via an
IPO if the deal was not completed. On March 1, 2010, GE announced plans to sell its 20.85% stake in Turkey-based Garanti Bank. 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. In October 2010, GE acquired gas engines manufacturer
Dresser Industries in a $3 billion deal and also bought a $1.6 billion portfolio of retail credit cards from
Citigroup Inc. On October 14, 2010, GE announced the acquisition of data migration & SCADA simulation specialists Opal Software. In December 2010, for the second time that year (after the Dresser acquisition), GE bought the oil sector company
Wellstream, an oil pipe maker, for 800 million pounds ($1.3 billion). In March 2011, GE announced that it had completed the acquisition of privately held Lineage Power Holdings from
The Gores Group. In April 2011, GE announced it had completed its purchase of John Wood plc's Well Support Division for $2.8 billion. In 2011, GE Capital sold its $2 billion Mexican assets to
Santander for $162 million and exited the business in Mexico. Santander additionally assumed the portfolio debts of GE Capital in the country. Following this, GE Capital focused on its core business and shed its non-core assets. In June 2012, CEO and President of GE Jeff Immelt said that the company would invest
₹3
billion to accelerate its businesses in
Karnataka. In October 2012, GE acquired $7 billion worth of bank deposits from
MetLife Inc. On March 19, 2013, Comcast bought GE's shares in NBCU for $16.7 billion, ending the company's longtime stake in television and film media. In April 2013, GE acquired oilfield pump maker
Lufkin Industries for $2.98 billion. In April 2014, it was announced that GE was in talks to acquire the global power division of French engineering group
Alstom for a figure of around $13 billion. A rival joint bid was submitted in June 2014 by
Siemens and
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) with Siemens seeking to acquire Alstom's gas turbine business for €3.9 billion, and MHI proposing a joint venture in steam turbines, plus a €3.1 billion cash investment. In June 2014, a formal offer from GE worth $17 billion was agreed by the Alstom board. Part of the transaction involved the French government taking a 20% stake in Alstom to help secure France's energy and transport interests and French jobs. A rival offer from Siemens Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was rejected. The acquisition was expected to be completed in 2015. In October 2014, GE announced it was considering the sale of its
Polish banking business
Bank BPH. Later in 2014, General Electric announced plans to open its global operations center in
Cincinnati, Ohio. The Global Operations Center opened in October 2016 as home to GE's multifunctional shared services organization. It supports the company's finance/accounting, human resources, information technology, supply chain, legal and commercial operations, and is one of GE's four multifunctional shared services centers worldwide in
Pudong, China;
Budapest, Hungary; and
Monterrey, Mexico. In April 2015, GE announced its intention to sell off its property portfolio, worth $26.5 billion, to
Wells Fargo and
The Blackstone Group. It was announced in April 2015 that GE would sell most of its finance unit and return around $90 billion to shareholders as the firm looked to trim down on its holdings and rid itself of its image of a "hybrid" company, working in both banking and manufacturing. In August 2015, GE Capital agreed to sell its Healthcare Financial Services business to
Capital One for US$9 billion. The transaction involved US$8.5 billion of loans made to a wide array of sectors, including senior housing, hospitals, medical offices, outpatient services, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. Also in August 2015, GE Capital agreed to sell GE Capital Bank's on-line deposit platform to
Goldman Sachs. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but the sale included US$8 billion of on-line deposits and another US$8 billion of brokered certificates of deposit. The sale was part of GE's strategic plan to exit the U.S. banking sector and to free itself from tightening banking regulations. GE also aimed to shed its status as a "systemically important financial institution". In September 2015, GE Capital agreed to sell its transportation finance unit to Canada's
Bank of Montreal. The unit sold had US$8.7 billion (CA$11.5 billion) of assets, 600 employees, and 15 offices in the U.S. and Canada. The exact terms of the sale were not disclosed, but the final price would be based on the value of the assets at closing, plus a premium according to the parties. In October 2015, activist investor
Nelson Peltz's fund Trian bought a $2.5 billion stake in the company. In January 2016,
Haier acquired GE's appliance division for $5.4 billion. In October 2016,
GE Renewable Energy agreed to pay €1.5 billion to
Doughty Hanson & Co for
LM Wind Power during 2017. At the end of October 2016, it was announced that GE was under negotiations for a deal valued at about $30 billion to combine
GE Oil & Gas with
Baker Hughes. The transaction would create a publicly traded entity controlled by GE. It was announced that GE Oil & Gas would sell off its water treatment business, GE Water & Process Technologies, as part of its divestment agreement with Baker Hughes. The deal was cleared by the EU in May 2017, and by the
United States Department of Justice in June 2017. The merger agreement was approved by shareholders at the end of June 2017. On July 3, 2017, the transaction was completed, and Baker Hughes became a GE company and was renamed Baker Hughes, a GE Company (BHGE). In November 2018, GE reduced its stake in Baker Hughes to 50.4%. On October 18, 2019, GE reduced its stake to 36.8% and the company was renamed back to Baker Hughes. In May 2017, GE had signed $15 billion of business deals with
Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is one of GE's largest customers. In September 2017, GE announced the sale of its Industrial Solutions Business to
ABB. The deal closed on June 30, 2018.
Fraud allegations and notice of possible SEC civil action On August 15, 2019,
Harry Markopolos, a financial fraud investigator known for his discovery of a Ponzi scheme run by
Bernard Madoff, accused General Electric of being a "bigger fraud than Enron", alleging $38 billion in accounting fraud. GE denied wrongdoing. On October 6, 2020, General Electric reported it received a
Wells notice from the
Securities and Exchange Commission stating the SEC may take civil action for possible violations of securities laws.
Insufficient reserves for long-term care policies It is alleged that GE is "hiding" (i.e., under-reserved) $29 billion in losses related to its long-term care business. According to an August 2019 Fitch Ratings report, there are concerns that GE has not set aside enough money to cover its long-term care liabilities. In 2018, a lawsuit (the Bezio case) was filed in New York state court on behalf of participants in GE's 401(k) plan and shareowners alleging violations of Section 11 of the
Securities Act of 1933 based on alleged misstatements and omissions related to insurance reserves and performance of GE's business segments. The Kansas Insurance Department (KID) is requiring General Electric to make $14.5 billion of capital contributions for its insurance contracts during the 7-year period ending in 2024. GE reported the total liability related to its insurance contracts increased significantly from 2016 to 2019: :December 31, 2016 $26.1 billion :December 31, 2017 $38.6 billion :December 31, 2018 $35.6 billion :December 31, 2019 $39.6 billion In 2018, GE announced that the issuance of the new standard by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) regarding Financial Services – Insurance (Topic 944) would materially affect its financial statements. Mr. Markopolos estimated there would be a $US 10.5 billion charge when the new accounting standard is adopted in the first quarter of 2021.
Anticipated $8 billion loss upon disposition of Baker Hughes In 2017, GE acquired a 62.5% interest in Baker Hughes (BHGE) when it combined its oil & gas business with Baker Hughes Incorporated. In 2018, GE reduced its interest to 50.4%, resulting in the realization of a $2.1 billion loss. GE is planning to divest its remaining interest and has warned that the divestment will result in an additional loss of $8.4 billion (assuming a BHGE share price of $23.57 per share). In response to the fraud allegations, GE noted the amount of the loss would be $7.4 billion if the divestment occurred on July 26, 2019. Mr. Markopolos noted that BHGE is an asset available for sale and therefore
mark-to-market accounting is required. Markopolos noted GE's
current ratio was only 0.67.
Final years and three-way split (2018–2024) In 2018, the GE Pension Plan reported losses of US$3.3 billion on plan assets. In 2018, General Electric changed the discount rate used to calculate the actuarial liabilities of its pension plans. The rate was increased from 3.64% to 4.34%. Consequently, the reported liability for the underfunded pension plans decreased by $7 billion year-over-year, from $34.2 billion in 2017 to $27.2 billion in 2018. On March 30, 2020, General Electric factory workers protested to convert jet engine factories to make ventilators during the
COVID-19 crisis. In June 2020, GE made an agreement to sell its Lighting business to Savant Systems, Inc. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. In November 2020, General Electric warned it would be cutting jobs waiting for a recovery due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On November 9, 2021, the company announced it would divide itself into three public companies. On July 18, 2022, GE unveiled the brand names of the companies it had devised through its planned separation:
GE Aerospace,
GE HealthCare, and
GE Vernova. The new companies are respectively focused on aerospace, healthcare, and energy (renewable energy, power, and digital). The first spin-off of
GE HealthCare was finalized on January 4, 2023; GE continues to hold 10.24% of shares and intends to sell the remaining over time. This was followed by the spin-off of GE's portfolio of energy businesses, which became GE Vernova on April 2, 2024. Following these transactions, GE became an aviation-focused company; GE Aerospace is the legal successor of the original GE. The company's legal name is still General Electric Company. == Financial performance ==