Regions

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), sources told the newspaper General Electric Co.'s (GE) finance arm GE Capital has plans to exit from its US consumer lending operations. The move was considered a strategy to return focus on General Electric Co.'s main industrial operations. 

The US banking business of General Electric had issued store credit cards to 55 million US customers. Earlier, GE said the business earned the company USD2.2 billion in revenue last 2012. GE said the operations of the consumer lending business accounted for USD50 billion of a total USD274 billion in outstanding loans contracted by GE's finance arm. 

The exit would be done through a planned initial public offering in early 2014, sources told WSJ. The newspaper also wrote GE has been laying the groundwork for the planned IPO, but the size of the IPO has not been determined. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group were said to be tapped to work on the IPO, and that there would also be smaller exits or asset sales.

When Reuters approached GE for comment about the divestment, the company was unavailable as contact was outside business hours.