There was a swagger to GE Capital’s deal-making. It acknowledged no limits or borders as it rolled up assets that others didn’t want. Size and volume were only benefits. GE had a seemingly bottomless pot of cash to put to work. Its deal-makers—its salesmen, as one executive called them—just had to go find places to put it. They went, eventually, to the end of the world. In 2006, GE bought the $500 million mortgage portfolio of New Zealand’s Superbank, a joint venture that aimed to bring mainstream banking to supermarkets. The unusual operation would last just three years. But GE had what it
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