Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric

by Thomas Gryta

Unfortunately for Immelt—and the legions who held GE stock options that continued to sit untouched—the stock would have a hard time going much further. The frustration of wallowing below the $30 benchmark deepened with the realization of being stuck there. In the annual letter, Immelt wrapped up his lecture on the limitless superlatives of GE with an awkward public plea to major institutional investors—a blanket term for banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, insurance companies, and other large investors. Institutional investors own the vast majority of the equity markets, and they aren’t usually pitched in public by the CEO of a major corporation. “We have delivered for you in the last five years. But we are still under-owned by big investors. In this time of uncertainty, why not GE? We have great businesses, global scale and strong initiatives,” he wrote, like a heartbroken lover begging for reconciliation. “We have a ton of cash that can protect you,” he added. “And we will lead the Industrial Internet. We are the Digital Industrial. We have grit. Our leaders learned from the experience of economic volatility.”