General Electric

General Electric Company (GE) was an American multinational conglomerate. It played a role in the development of electric power, electric light, home appliances, aviation, and medical imaging. GE was established in 1892 through the merger of Thomas Edison's Edison General Electric Company and the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, a consolidation conceived and orchestrated by financier J. P. Morgan. Over its history, GE had multiple divisions, including aerospace, transportation, energy, healthcare, lighting, locomotives, appliances, and finance. In 2020, GE ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 33rd largest firm in the United States by gross revenue. In 2023, the company was ranked 64th in the Forbes Global 2000. In 2011, GE ranked among the Fortune 20 as the 14th most profitable company, but later very severely underperformed the market (by about 75%) as its profitability collapsed. Two employees of GE—Irving Langmuir (1932) and Ivar Giaever (1973)—have been awarded the Nobel Prize. From 1986 until 2013, GE was the owner of the NBC television network through its purchase of its former subsidiary RCA before its acquisition of NBC's parent company NBCUniversal by Comcast in 2011. Following the Great Recession of the late 2000s, General Electric began selling off various divisions and assets, including its appliances and financial capital divisions, under Jeff Immelt's leadership as CEO. John Flannery, Immelt's replacement in 2017, further divested General Electric's assets in locomotives and lighting in order to focus the company more on aviation. Restrictions on air travel during the COVID-19 pandemic caused General Electric's revenue to fall significantly in 2020. Ultimately, GE's final CEO Larry Culp announced in November 2021 that General Electric was to be broken up into three separate, public companies by 2024. GE Aerospace, the aerospace company, is GE's legal successor. GE HealthCare, the health technology company, was spun off from GE in 2023....