Recent News: Annual Shareholders Meeting, GE Japan, Cost-Cutting, Hybrid Vehicle, Fortune 500, and The Environment

In the spotlight: GE meeting puts Erie on national stage (VIDEO)
Jeffrey R. Immelt, chairman and CEO of General Electric Co., hardly seemed surprised by the questions or fazed by the charges."You can't do a job like this if you can't take a punch," he said Wednesday...

GE Japan's Norbom Succeeds Bertamini as CEO for China Business
General Electric Co. named Mark Norbom as chief executive officer of its China operations, succeeding Steve Bertamini, who is leaving to run Standard Chartered Plc's consumer-banking group. The appointment is effective immediately and Norbom will continue to run GE Japan until a replacement is named, spokesman Greg Farrett said. Bertamini will remain with the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company until May 16. He starts at Standard Chartered on June 1, according to an April 22 statement by the bank to the London Stock Exchange...

GE raises target for cost-cutting
General Electric Co. Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt said Wednesday that capital markets had improved since the end of the first quarter but that the overall economic picture was unchanged, and that the company had raised its 2008 cost-cutting goal by $1 billion....

GE debuts hybrid dump truck
We have seen the advent of hybrid cars, hybrid trains and even hybrid tanks. Now General Electric (GE) has announced that it has successfully tested a giant hybrid dump truck.
Writing on the GE Global Research blog, Tim Richter an engineer in the conglomerate's hybrid vehicle team, said that the haul truck had been fitted with a hybrid system based on the same battery technology used in the hybrid locomotive the company demonstrated last year....

GE's bad idea
We knew that General Electric Co. was in a bit of trouble. Many large corporations are, as the national economy slides further toward what could be a severe recession. That much can explain GE's CEO, Jeff Immelt, appearing before an investors meeting last week vowing to do better.
What can't be so readily explained, however, is just what would compel GE, still one of the world's richest companies, to try to plead its way out of having to pay what for it is ultimately a tiny tax bill...

GE Expects To Cut $3 Billion In Costs
Less than two weeks after General Electric Co. shocked investors by reporting a 6 percent loss in first-quarter profits, CEO Jeff Immelt told shareholders at the company’s annual meeting that he expects “even more difficult times ahead” for the economy. Immelt told more than 1,000 shareholders at the company’s annual meeting in Erie, Pa. that he was disappointed that GE will fail to deliver on a promised 10 percent earnings for 2008, and said the company would “learn from our successes and failures to get better.”...

GE meeting successful by all counts
Seeing the corporate jets lined up at Erie International Airport, and the nearly 2,000 General Electric Co. shareholders at the Bayfront Convention Center on Wednesday had to leave the Erie region feeling it was part of something bigger than itself....

GE Leads 11 Connecticut Companies In Fortune 500
General Electric Corp. led 11 Connecticut companies on the latest Fortune 500 list, which was published this month in Fortune magazine. Eighteen other companies from Connecticut made the Fortune 1000 list, the annual ranking of America’s largest corporations based on total revenues for 2007. Fairfield-based GE ranked No. 6 in revenues at $176.7 billion, behind Wal-Mart Stores, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, General Motors and ConocoPhillips...

GE supports environmental effort
The heat on General Electric Co. Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt came from all camps this week.That happens when a first-quarter earnings report chops 13 percent off a company's stock...