GE Healthcare to be spun off in January, gets new board

GENERAL Electric on Monday (Sep 12) set the first week of 2023 to complete the spinoff of its healthcare unit and named a new board for the planned independent company.

The new board members of the unit, which will be named GE HealthCare, include its chief executive officer, Peter Arduini, as well as executives from Honeywell International and Amazon Web Services.

Including GE CEO Larry Culp as non-executive chairman, the board will have 10 members.

“With this initial group of Directors, we have a highly qualified and capable Board that will enable GE HealthCare to hit the ground running,” Culp said on Monday.

In November last year, the conglomerate outlined a plan to split into three publicly traded companies focused on energy, healthcare and aviation to simplify its business and pare down debt.

Shares of GE, however, have fallen by nearly a third since then as it battled worker and equipment shortages.

The company’s results have also been dragged by underperformance in its renewable energy business due to regulatory uncertainty.

Still, GE’s healthcare unit has been a bright spot in recent quarters due to strong demand for its medical equipment and services that allowed it to raise prices. For six months ended June 30, revenue rose 1 per cent to US$8.88 billion from a year earlier.

In contrast, renewable energy and power businesses reported a revenue drop of 18 per cent and 6 per cent, respectively, for the first six months.

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GE, which expects to retain a stake of 19.9 per cent in the healthcare business, had named Culp as non-executive chairman of GE HealthCare and outlined early 2023 as the spinoff timeline when it announced it was breaking up into three companies in 2021.

GE HealthCare will host an investor day on Dec 8. REUTERS