General Electric is combining its aircraft leasing business with Ireland’s AerCap Holdings in a deal valued at more than $30 billion, a big step in what has become a six-year odyssey to reshape the one-time sprawling, global conglomerate.
By pushing GE Capital Aviation Services, or GCAS, into a separate business, GE is essentially closing the books on GE Capital, the financial wing of General Electric that nearly sank the entire company during the 2008 financial crisis.
“Today marks GE’s transformation to a more focused, simpler, and stronger industrial company,” Chairman and CEO Larry Culp said in a statement Wednesday.
The sale of the aircraft leasing business comes four years after GE shut down the former Alstom plant on Chattanooga’s riverfront, which was once the city’s biggest factory, and five years after GE sold its appliance division, including the GE Roper plant in Lafayette, Georgia, to Haier Group, the world’s biggest home appliance maker, for $5.4 billion. GE once also owned the former 3M Ceramics plant in North Chattanooga that was converted into the Hamilton County Business Development Center in 1988.
AerCap will pay about $24 billion in cash for GCAS, and GE will take an approximately 46% ownership stake in the combined company, and $1 billion paid in AerCap notes or cash at closing.