GE’s New CEO Turns the Page on a Horrible 2018

In the annals of General Electric Co.’s storied 126-year-history, 2018 will go down as a year almost everyone with ties to the company would like to forget.

GE lost nearly $90 billion of its market value, its A-level credit rating, its place in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and any pretensions it still had of being a breeding ground for managerial excellence. The company’s executives, employees and investors were hit with one piece of bad news after another as write-downs piled up, profits in its power unit plummeted, regulators scrutinized its accounting practices and muddy messaging derailed a promised pivot to greater financial transparency. All at once, decades of attempted reinventions – from Jack Welch’s creation of a sprawling conglomerate and push for ever-higher profits, to Jeff Immelt’s post-crisis embrace of GE’s industrial core and ill-fated ramp-up in power and energy – caught up with GE, undermining a company once envied for corporate know-how, admired for best-in-class leadership and respected as a financial gold standard.