Brooke Sutherland, Columnist

GE Investors, Settle In for a Grind

CEO John Flannery pacified investors, but meaningful improvements will take a while.

October 23, 2017 at 12:34 PM UTC

Brooke Sutherland is Bloomberg News' Boston bureau chief and writes the Industrial Strength Newsletter. She was previously a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering deals and industrial companies and an M&A reporter for Bloomberg News.

1508765286_pic — Photographer: Paul Thomas/Bloomberg

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GE is smart to simplify, but its pledge of $20 billion in divestitures is no game-changer.

The $200 billion industrial conglomerate last week reported its biggest earnings miss in at least a decade and drastically chopped its 2017 profit and cash flow outlook. CEO John Flannery acknowledged the "completely unacceptable" results and vowed to make some major changes "with urgency." These include moving away from the earnings adjustments that have so irked investors, improving cash flow and margins and getting rid of operations that suck up money and management attention without much payoff.