Recent News: Job & Cost Custs, Regulation, Economy, Dividend, Jack Welch and GE Oil & Gas

Report: GE will cut costs as it braces for 2009
The chief executive of General Electric Co. said Friday that the company is cutting costs as it braces for a difficult 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site. Jeff Immelt, in an interview at a conference at Columbia University in New York, said costs will be lower in 2009 than in 2008...

GE Will Cut Costs, Jobs, Immelt Says
General Electric Co. is cutting costs, preparing for a new wave of regulation from Washington and embracing manufacturing over financial services as ways out of the economic crisis, its chief executive said Friday. "Costs will be lower in 2009 than in 2008," Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt said in an interview. "That will be true across the board." Employment will also be lower, he said, declining to name numbers or percentages....

GE cuts costs, prepares for more regulation
General Electric Co is cutting costs and preparing for a wave of regulation from Washington, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Chairman and Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt, speaking at a Columbia Business School social-enterprise conference, said costs and employment would be lower in 2009 across the board, the newspaper reported. Immelt did not give numbers or percentages, the report said....

GE’s Immelt Sees Shrinking Economy for 2-3 Quarters
The U.S. economy will have two or three quarters of “negative growth” once global financial systems stabilize, General Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt said.
“You might have a two- or three-quarter negative growth and then a slow pullout,” Immelt said during a Webcast presentation for students at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “You’ve got this financial crisis going on, behind which is recession.”...

GE Needs Fed Bailout To Finance Operations; Dividend At Risk
GE is struggling to get short term financing at a price it wants to pay. So what does GE do? The answer is twofold...

GE to Cut Costs, Jobs: Report
General Electric plans to cut costs next year as it confronts the global economic slowdown, according to a published media report...

A SUCCESS STORY: Virtual unknown GE Oil & Gas now a star
In 2001, General Electric Co’s oil and gas business had only a few dozen employees in Houston and was a virtual unknown in the oil patch. “Our primary goal was just to get people to know who we were,” said Mat Castaneda, general manager of North American sales for GE Oil & Gas....

GE's former CEO Welch says economy will improve in 2009
Former General Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer Jack Welch said the U.S. economy will start to improve in late 2009 after struggling for the next three quarters. "We are going to have some very tough times," Welch said on the ABC News "This Week" program. "The fourth quarter of this year could have negative growth in the three to four percent range."...