In 2001, non-U.S. sales made up 36 percent of GE’s revenue. Flash-forward to 2009 and that number had shot up to 54 percent. To build on that decade of growth — and push it toward a 60 percent target — GE unveiled a new plan on November 8 that further decentralizes its international teams, making them faster, more local and able to accelerate both global growth and U.S. exports.
Big picture: Click the image to enlarge it. GE’s global growth has expanded by about 15 percent a year for most of the past decade.
GE vice chairman John Rice, who’s been in charge of GE’s core aviation, transportation and healthcare businesses, has now been tapped to oversee all of GE’s non-U.S. operations — with particular emphasis on high-growth markets such as China, India, the Middle East and Brazil. He’s also charged with helping GE sell U.S.-made products all over the world.
A prime example can be seen in GE’s recent deals for power turbines and jet engines in India, which were in focus as part of President Obama’s trip to the country this weekend. As GE chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt underscored while there, those deals – valued at more than $1.4 billion — and others are part of GE’s goal to “be more focused on exports” and to double overall exports in five years.
For example, as the White House explained in its fact sheet on the trip, the $750 million deal with India’s Reliance Power, which is buying the turbines, will support an estimated 2,650 jobs in the U.S. as “GE purchases equipment from 240 suppliers across the United States—an estimated 14 percent of which are small- and medium-sized enterprises.” In the jet engine deal, the White House notes that the engines are all “U.S. export content, supporting an estimated 4,440 jobs.”
The November 8 announcement comes as GE continues to sign “company to country” agreements in places like Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Indonesia in which GE works directly with governments to craft technology and service solutions that meet local needs. And, just as GE recently reorganized its entire structurein India so that all of its operations in that market report into one business unit – operations in Germany will also be reorganized in a similar fashion.
Those growth initiatives have happened at the same time that GE, on the global R&D front, has invested $330 million since 2001 to create or expand its research centers in New York, China, Germany and India (with Brazil soon to join the ranks).
Powering up: GE’s international growth can be seen in energy, such as our work with India’s state power company, pictured above. “[India is] going to invest in a whole range of different technologies and GE is going to be able to participate in most of them,” CEO Jeff Immelt said during his visit over the weekend, according to Bloomberg News. Read further coverage of the India trip in The Economic Times.
