jdubrox

Shareholder Communications: Kudos to GE's Immelt, Dominion

I know you made a sizeable investment in GE many months ago. We all did and I commended you on making that purchase. I commended you because GE had "guaranteed" its dividend for the rest of 2009, and I distinctly remember Immelt's comment, "Don't even go there."

Well, GE has cut the dividend by 70% and lost its AAA credit rating. These were two of my biggest reasons for investing in GE to begin with. I feel lied to, and I even found an article about the class-action lawsuit against GE that has recently cropped up, claiming the company made fraudulent claims about its dividend and misled investors. Just a few weeks before cutting the dividend is when Immelt made his comment. Not all that much changed in those few weeks, and there's no way that he couldn't have seen this dividend cut coming.

I think that GE's leadership may be impaired, but I'm not on the board so I can't say for sure. I don't know how much of what's happening to GE is Immelt's fault. It could be that anybody running GE right now would be experiencing the same pain, but nobody knows. I decided not to buy more GE stock, especially since analyst estimates for earnings over the next few years are looking like sub-$1 earnings per share. And have you looked at GE's balance sheet lately? Talk about drowning under long-term debt...

Anyways, I read the proxy statement and annual report, too. They were delivered to me in the mail from my broker. I thought that a lot of the shareholder proposals were good, actually. A lot of those proposed items were items that would reveal GE's management's true performance. And what do you think the "Directors" recommended? They recommended that shareholders vote against every single one of them. The justifications were baloney, in my opinion, and it's obvious that the leadership is trying to hang onto their MASSIVE salaries, pensions, and fringe benefits for as long as they can. Eventually the underperforming members of GE's executive staff will be hung out to dry, much the same way they have left their company out.