GE Is Stalled Between Reset and Recession
CEO Larry Culp’s first year was a busy one. His second will be a slog, with little help from the economy.
Turnaround efforts at GE meet economic headwinds, and its stock is left floundering.
Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
Has it only been a year?
Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of General Electric Co.’s ouster of CEO John Flannery in favor of board member Larry Culp, an outsider respected for his operational prowess and dealmaking as the former head of Danaher Corp. It was an abrupt change for a company that usually moves at a glacial pace, but the prospect of a steep quarterly operating loss in GE’s struggling power unit and a $22 billion goodwill writedown on the disastrous acquisition of Alstom SA’s energy assets convinced the board that Flannery wasn’t moving nearly fast enough to save the company.