General Electric will keep its focus on boosting its dividend and improving margins as it faces what Chief Executive Jeff Immelt expects to be an extended period of economic instability.
“We live in what most business commentators call a volatile world. I would argue that when the environment is continuously unstable, it is no longer volatile. Rather, we have entered a new economic era,” the head of the largest U.S. conglomerate said in his annual letter to shareholders. “It could remain this way for a long time.”
Over the past year shocks including Europe’s debt crisis and Japan’s nuclear disaster, as well as the uneven U.S. economic recovery, have hit both investor confidence and GE’s operations.
In the face of that uncertainty, the world’s largest maker of jet engines and electric turbines aims to cut its costs — and to reverse a trend of outsourcing manufacturing operations in order to run its factories more efficiently.
FOCUS ON DIVIDEND
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