General Electric Co. (GE) Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt – who transformed the company into a digital industrial portfolio aligned to oil and gas and other key markets – will step down as CEO and retire from the company at year-end 2017.
Immelt. Image from GE. |
John Flannery, currently president and CEO of GE Healthcare, has been named CEO of the company by GE’s board of directors, effective 1 August 2017, and chairman and CEO effective 1 January 2018. Immelt will remain chairman of GE’s board until 31 December 2017.
Under Immelt’s leadership, GE has completed US$260 billion of asset sales for GE Capital since 2015, acquired global energy leader Alstom, announced the combination of GE subsidiary GE Oil & Gas with Baker Hughes, and divested legacy businesses like GE Appliances, NBC Universal and Plastics.
In recent years, GE Oil & Gas has been working with oil and gas operators and drilling companies to implement digital technology into exploration and production operations. Late last year, BP and GE announced a joint digital start-up, through which the companies would seek to boost the efficiency, reliability and safety of BP’s oil and gas production operations.
The U.S. Department of Justice and European Union have both approved the GE-Baker Hughes merger, which is expected to close in the near term, Evercore-ISI analyst James West told Offshore Engineer.
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