GE Capital to Buy Allianz’s Commercial Lending Unit in Australia

General Electric Co. (GE)’s finance unit agreed to buy an Australian commercial lending subsidiary of Allianz SE (ALV) for an undisclosed amount.

GE Capital will acquire Allianz Finance Pty, which has a loan book of A$400 million ($415 million) and lends to companies with annual revenue of A$10 million to A$250 million, GE said in an e-mailed statement.

GE Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt is making inroads on his pledge to shrink GE Capital’s balance sheet and reduce its contribution to earnings. The unit’s ending net investment, a measure of its assets, fell to $419 billion as of Dec. 31, an 18 percent decline since January 2009.

“GE Capital already has relationships with one in four mid-market companies in Australia,” said Aaron Baxter, GE Capital’s head of commercial finance in Australia. “The acquisition of the Allianz Finance business allows us to deliver on our strategy of growing our commercial finance offering to this segment.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Sanat Vallikappen in Singapore at vallikappen@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Chitra Somayaji at csomayaji@bloomberg.net