December 7, 2017

Transformational Change Must Embrace the Hard Stuff

Impactful, sustainable change keeps companies calling A&M

GE's share price has underperformed for years, and CEO John Flannery, who took over from Jeff Immelt in August, has acted fast and made a number of hard choices, in part no doubt because activist investor Trian has a seat on its board.

After slashing GE's profit and cashflow expectations for 2017, and describing its performance as "completely unacceptable", Flannery cut the quarterly dividend payout by 50 percent (a sacred cow for GE investors) and said the company would divest at least $20 billion of businesses to focus on aviation, power and healthcare.

 

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