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

by Thomas Gryta

The plan would call for GE to hang on to GECAS, the jewel in Capital’s crown; that unit owned and leased a massive fleet of planes and jet engines, reaping profits with every launch of a commercial airliner into the air. It would also hang on to the stubs that facilitated the operations of the industrial businesses, such as those that lent for the development of new power installations or financed the purchase of healthcare equipment. GE would also be left with what amounted to the unwanted detritus in the basement of GE Capital—the odds and ends of deals gone sideways or bets that hadn’t panned out over the decades of aggressively pursuing returns with borrowed funds. (To the surprise of some observers, GE’s investor slides would include a graphic showing a sliver of “insurance” among the assets that would be left behind in the Capital exit. Insurance was a business GE was supposed to have left behind a decade earlier.)