The new CEO of General Electric John Flannery has since long held prominent positions in all of the American business right from statesmen –like figures for Corporate America, management icons to advisers to Presidents.
John Flannery, 55, who worked as CEO and President for its health Care unit has worked almost for 30 years with GE. At the same time, he is new for media speculation.
His broad and diverse background at GE includes some two decades as part of the company’s financial arm, corporate experience working on mergers and acquisitions, as well as a successful tenure running one of GE’s operating units.
He said to investors in a conference
“I have a long history of looking at things from an investor’s perspective by training and background.”
Flannery and Immelt- his predecessor also mentioned his focus on capital allocation and his background in the company’s finance business. This would boost some analysts concern on Wall Street which was down during tenure of Immelt.
William Blair an analyst at Nicholas Heymann who has an outperform rating on GE’s stock said,
“If there’s a need for further portfolio optimization, [Flannery] has as good a handle as anyone on how to do this in GE’s business,”
Flannery pragmatically said about GE’s stock price
“it’s fair to say none of us are happy with the price right now. What investors want is growth, margin, and cash. That’s what we’re focused on the company.”
His journey at GE started as Capital evaluating risk for leveraged buy-outs, then moved to its corporate restructuring group before going on to hold global roles in Latin America, Asia, and India. At GE’s corporate headquarters, he led business development — its name for mergers and acquisitions.
In spite of such experience, he humbly said,
“I really need to spend the next period here doing a comprehensive review,” noting that Immelt had, “asked me to take a fresh look at the company from angles, and that’s where I’m going to spend my time, doing a deep dive into all aspects of the company.”
Though the result is not clear he said he will continue Immelt’s strategy of adding digital capabilities to company’s products.
“There are many areas in which we’ve excelled,” he said in a call with investors, but “at the same time there’s clearly areas we need to be better and we need to address those areas with urgency and with purpose.”
Date: June 19, 2017