Below is an excerpt from the financial press which highlights the lack of transparency in the GE Capital as a reason for not buying the stock! This type of article is damaging for the company and will continue to reduce the company’s access to new longer term financing, either through debt or equity markets.

Please reconsider your financial reporting communications. The public is demanding more active action statements. My observation is most recently supported by the tough questioning of the auto industry executives who are being pressed for more detail on their business strategies and ability to match supply to demand and repay debt. What I have seen on this website does not even come close to what is really needed. What I call the reorg video provides no significant operating information and does not add to my comfort level regarding Mr. Neal’s management skills.

GE was once a great investment because it was a well diversified, well managed and focused industrial with a financing arm that supported the key growth businesses it had identified. Along the way, GE has lost its focus for the Capital arm and this entity became opportunistic in raising funds for supposed high return investment/finance opportunities in a wide variety of financial products. As far as I can tell, this move away from core financing support worked well and enhanced the bottom line when markets were strong as market liquidity and credit risks were obscured by the growth opportunities worldwide. Now as the housing market, the underlying linchpin collapses, this unit’s strategy is revealed to be the millstone that might drag down the whole company. I would like to see the company shed many of the tangentially related investment bank like strategies with their high capital/liquidity risk demands and return to the core financing arm philosophy. Develop a strategy to spin out the investment bank. If you could demonstrate that a return to core is the new approach in Mr. Immelt’s presentation in mid December and provide greater transparency for GE Capital, it might go a long way in supporting public investor confidence in the company and reinvigorate interest in its shares. It certainly would be easier to evaluate the simpler more transparent entity. Clearly the seeming mismatch between the industrial strategies and the investment bank like functions today truly challenge analysts, investigative financial reporters and investors alike. Fix this.

Thank you
J McCabe

ARTICLE EXCERPT:
Vitaliy Katsenelson, director of research for Investment Management Associates in Denver, says that the stock market has been "range-bound" for a long time, but that "we have gone from a cyclical bull into a cyclical bear" while staying within that range.
As such, he suggests that investors "not focus on the cyclical trends and try to focus on individual stocks. … The market is still not cheap, but there are a lot of cheap stocks. … This is a great environment for stockpickers."

During an interview with Chuck Jaffe, MarketWatch senior columnist, Katsenelson noted that many of the financial services stocks can’t be analyzed right now, which should frighten most investors away because "if you can’t analyze a stock, you basically become a speculator."

With that in mind, Katsenelson – the author of "Active Value Investing" — put a sell recommendation on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), Bank of America Corp. (BAC) and Citigroup (C) .

He noted that American Express Co. (AXP) is one of the few financials he believes can be easily analyzed, and he suggested that it’s a long-term buy, although the price may get worse before any long-term rebound begins. He said that the financial services business at General Electric Co. (GE) is sufficiently hard to analyze. While other aspects of the conglomerate may be promising, he said he’d still avoid the stock.

Megan
GE