Bourbeau

GE - Bad Management Strategy or Bad Luck?

No matter what anyone says about Jeffrey Immelt, the facts are very simple. Despite said obstacles over his tenure, he and his team had sufficient time to make his mark and has failed. More importantly, he has demonstrated a serious flaw in his CEO demeanor by being unwilling to accept full responsibilty for GE's demise and resign. Worse than all of this is the BofD absolute abdication of responsibilty for not stepping in and removing him This blabber that you hear that the reason for not removing Immelt is because if you were to search for a new CEO of sufficent stature to run GE, you'd hire Immelt. That's complete asinine stupidity!!!! Jeff Immelt and his CFO Keith Sherin have lost all credibility on Wall Street and with institutional investors and there's no way they're going to win it back. Why institutional investors have not demanded their removal is, to this day, puzzling.

GE: Immelt Gets Welched

Jack Welch didn't coordinate the 1st Quarter results, Immelt did. It's Immelt's responsibilty to manage that exercise and he failed it miserably, along with his CEO. He had time to warn The Street and he didn't; he seems to think this is just a "bump in the road" and it's more serious than that; and he appeared to be totally lost as to what exactly happened vis a vis Bear Stearns, and he had more than a few weeks to nail it cold. Jack was right, Jeff Immelt created the creidibility problem in conjunction w/his crack executive team. One more thing everyone is overlooking; all three GE Vice Chairmen - Rice, Neal and Sherin are finance guys - tell me they shouldn't have had better grip on this then they did.

What Went Wrong at GE?

My comment on all this is relatively straight forward. Where were the auditors - internal and KPM&G? GE just had their financial statements for 2007 auditied - none of this was apparent on the books of the GE Capital segments? As far as this being a bump in the road - I doubt it; bumps in the road don't cause earth quakes. And as far as not knowing about this, what was GE Management doing since last summer when all of this subprime/credit mess was being uncovered - sleeping?