Jeff Immelt stepping down as CEO of GE

Flannery, 55, current president and CEO of GE Healthcare, will succeed Jeff Immelt, 61, who will remain board chairman through his retirement from the company on December 31, when Flannery will take over the chairmanship.

He replaced Jack Welch, GE’s legendary chairman and chief executive, just days before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. The new boss was seen as a big thinker who could guide GE into the digital age and do so with a lighter touch than his cutthroat predecessor.

GE has spent billions building a digital business that marries electronic sensors and powerful analytic computing to industrial equipment and has no plans to change that focus.

But simply running a business of the size and complexity of GE would challenge most executives.

GE shares rose 3.2% to $28.83 before regular trading in NY.

Since the company’s low of $7.06 on March 9, 2009, Immelt has increased the stock price by 314.6% to its current trading price.

Yet investors were unimpressed.

General Electric is to replace its boss after 16 years as it seeks to build on a restructuring that has focused its operations on heavy industry. Peltz has pushed GE to deepen cost cuts to boost profits. Jack Brennan, lead independent director of GE, said…

Still, he added, “We think GE remains on the right track with its strategy and expect share performance to improve in the coming year”. That underperformance had some pressing for more urgency from Immelt.

Flannery would be CEO of the company effective August 1 and chairman effective January 1, GE said.

Immelt, 61, guided GE through the sale of its finance business, GE Capital, and the acquisition of French power business Alstom, three years ago in a $13.5 billion deal.

Flannery says GE will make the results of the review public in the fall, but “we’re not starting from a weak position at all”. The Board of Directors had been planning for succession since 2011, according to a statement. The board is confident that in the years to come, GE investors and employees will benefit from Jeffs hard work.”. GE jumped 3.8 percent to $29 at 12:45 p.m.in NY after climbing as much as 5.5 percent for the biggest intraday gain since October 2015. GE has dropped 12% this year through Friday, compared with an 8.6% gain for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. GE’s share price is down by about a third since Mr Immelt took over, although it has recovered steadily since the financial crisis. In 2013, he was chosen to helm business development at GE Corporate, where he focused on capital allocation for the company and led the acquisition of Alstom, the largest industrial acquisition in the company’s history.