General Electric

Type: Public (NYSE: GE)
Founded: 1878 in Menlo Park, New Jersey - Thomas Alva Edison
Headquarters: Fairfield, Connecticut, USA
Key people: Jeff Immelt, Chairman & CEO Keith Sherin, Vice Chairman, CFO
Industry: Conglomerate
Products: Aircraft Jet Engines, Electricity, Entertainment, Finance, Gas Turbine, Generation, Industrial Automation ,Lighting, Medical Imaging Equipment, Medical Software, Motors, Plastics, Railway Locomotives, Wind Turbine
Website: www.ge.com

General Information

The General Electric Company, or GE (NYSE: GE) is a multinational American technology and services conglomerate incorporated in the State of New York.. In terms of market capitalization, GE is the world's second largest company. In the 1960s, aspects of U.S. tax laws and accounting practices led to a rise in the assembly of conglomerates. GE, which was a conglomerate long before the term was coined, is arguably the most successful organization of this type.

Business Model

GE's divisions include GE Commercial Finance, GE Industrial, GE Infrastructure (including GE-Aviation and Smiths Aerospace), GE Consumer Finance, GE Healthcare, and NBC Universal, an entertainment company.

Through these businesses, GE participates in a wide variety of markets including the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity, lighting, industrial automation, medical imaging equipment, motors, railway locomotives, aircraft jet engines, aviation services and materials such as plastics, silicones and abrasives. It was co-founder and is 80% owner (with Vivendi) of NBC Universal, the National Broadcasting Company. Through GE Commercial Finance, GE Consumer Finance, GE Equipment Services, and GE Insurance it offers a range of financial services as well. It has a presence in over 100 countries.

Since over half of GE's revenue is derived from financial services, it is arguably a financial company with a manufacturing arm. It is also one of the largest lenders in countries other than the United States, such as Japan. Even though the first wave of conglomerates (such as ITT, Ling-Temco-Vought, Tenneco, etc) fell by the wayside by the mid-1980s, in the late 1990s, another wave (consisting of Westinghouse, Tyco, and others) tried and failed to emulate GE's success.

Brand

General Electric has the fourth most recognized brand in the world, worth almost $49 billion.

CEO Jeffrey Immelt had the new brand commissioned in 2004, after he took the reins as chairman, to unify the diversified businesses of GE. The brand included a change of the corporate color palette, small modifications to the GE Logo, a new customized font (GE Inspira), and a new slogan, 'imagination at work' replacing the longtime slogan 'we bring good things to life'. The new brand requires many headlines to be lowercased and adds visual 'white space' to documents and advertising to promote an open and approachable company. The new brand was designed by Wolff Olins and is used extensively on GE's marketing, literature and website.