General Electric has booted out its chairman and chief executive, John Flannery, after a little more a year on the job, amid declining profits and cash-flow problems.
Flannery will be replaced by H. Lawrence Culp, a current GE board member who served as chief executive of the Washington, D.C.-based conglomerate Danaher Corp. from 2000-2014, GE said.
GE also announced its cash-flow and earnings per share would be less than previously indicated, because of problems at its GE Power division. The company said it would take a noncash charge related to that division.
Once considered the essence of a cutting-edge industrial conglomerate, GE has seen its fortunes — and its stock price — fall sharply over the past decade. The company has been forced to sell off divisions and lay off employees, a process that accelerated under Flannery.
"I think we've been quite clear about where we have underperformed and how we fix that. So going back to the past is not productive for me," Flannery told CNBC in December 2017.
The announcement of Flannery's departure sent GE's stock price sharply higher in premarket trading.
In June, GE was taken out of the Dow Jones industrial average, where it had been a fixture since 1907. It was replaced by the parent company of the Walgreens pharmacy chain.
Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDAwMTM1NDgzMDEyMzg2MDcwMzJjODJiYQ004))
