General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) has decided to initiate talks with Wells Fargo & Co (NYSE:WFC) to sell its lending and leasing portfolio. As per the reports, U.S. commercial lending and leasing portfolio of GE is worth $74 billion.
Road So Far:
As per the information revealed by one of the people close to this deal, GE had initiated the talks with Wells Fargo last week. There are many other parties interested in buying this commercial lending and leasing portfolio; hence, nothing has been decided so far. Apart from selling the U.S. CLL portfolio, GE is also looking forward to breaking the business and selling its CLL portfolio piecemeal.
The person who shared all this information asked not to be named the official announcement hasn’t been made yet. When reporters contacted the representatives of Wells Fargo and GE to know more about this matter, both the companies declined to comment.
GE’s move is the clear indication that it wants to be free from its GE Capital business due to the additional regulatory pressure that comes along with it. It’s not the first time when it has taken any such initiative. Earlier this month, GE announced that it would try to part its way from GE Capital business over the next few years in order to focus more towards industrial manufacturing field. While addressing the analysts during the quarterly conference call last week, Jeff Bornstein, CFO, GE, stated that the company was serious about selling GE Capital’s assets. As per the reports, it has put assets worth $165 billion for sell.
GE announced a few months back that it had decided to sell most of the real estate assets of GE Capital to Wells Fargo and Blackstone Group LP for $23 billion. The deal was executed in less than four week’s time. It has been making decisions very swiftly; hence, investors can expect many more such announcements in the coming days.
