Capital Allocation: Principles, Strategies, and Processes for Creating Long-Term Shareholder Value

CHAPTER 15

Distressed Sellers

The General Electric Co. Ltd (GEC) had a long, proud history as a British conglomerate. In many ways, the triumph and tragedy of the British General Electric Company is not unlike the story of the American General Electric Company (see Chapter 18).

GEC’s origins stretch back to the early 1880s, when German immigrants Gustav Binswanger and Hugo Hirst opened a wholesale business called the Electric Appliance Company. In 1884, they brought in another partner and started a separate electric wholesale distribution business called the Electric Apparatus Company Limited. Within a few years, the Electric Apparatus Company bought a factory to manufacture telephones, bells, and switchboards as it expanded into the manufacturing ...