FOURTH-QUARTER PERFORMANCE
Oil proves sticky in tough year for
General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt is looking to increase his bet on crude by combining the oil operations with Baker Hughes
New York — General Electric’s (GE’s) woes in the oil patch persisted in the fourth quarter, denting sales and dragging down shares to their biggest decline in four months. Weakness in the oil and gas unit, which makes drilling equipment and pipes, would probably linger into 2017 after an "extremely difficult" 2016, chief financial officer Jeff Bornstein said on a conference call. Improvement was unlikely until the second half of 2017, he said after GE announced fourth-quarter revenue that fell short of analysts’ estimates. The results underscored GE’s challenges to find its footing after a sluggish economy curbed growth in 2016 and put pressure on CEO Jeffrey Immelt’s efforts to sharpen the focus on machinery such as gas turbines and jet engines. Immelt, who sold off most consumer and financial businesses in the past two years, is looking to increase his bet on crude by combining the oil operations with Baker Hughes. GE was facing a "slow-growth and volatile environment", Immelt sai...
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