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To: Venkie who wrote (119717)	4/21/1999 8:12:00 PM
From: Boplicity	Respond to of 176387

GE is helping us too. <<GE Says 1999 Net Income Will Exceed $10B Get Quote, Company Info: GE Reuters CLEVELAND (April 21) - General Electric Co., the diversified conglomerate with businesses ranging from jet engines to broadcasting, is on track for more than $10 billion in net income in 1999 and "well over" $100 billion in revenues, Chairman and Chief Executive Jack Welch said on Wednesday. The Fairfield, Conn.-based company had 1998 revenues of $100.5 billion, up 11 percent over 1997, while its earnings rose by 13 percent last year to a record $9.296 billion. Welch also told shareholders at the company's annual meeting in Cleveland that cost benefits from the "Six Sigma" quality initiative, now in its fourth year, will be more than $1.5 billion this year. Last year's Six Sigma-related savings were about $775 million, he said. The quality thrust is "a disciplined method of eliminating virtually all defects from every one of the company's products, processes, and transactions," said Welch, who has headed GE since 1981 and is scheduled to retire at the end of next year. GE has 11 main businesses, including appliances, plastics, power systems and broadcasting network NBC, among others. The company's total European revenues should approach $25 billion this year, compared to less than $6 billion at the beginning of the decade, Welch said. A GE spokesman added that the company's 1998 European revenues were about $23 billion. "Today, we have a GE culture that truly understands the benefits of size, and the need for agility, and these facets of our culture provide a foundation for our growth," Welch said. GE sees the Asian financial crisis as a "huge opportunity," Welch said. The company intends to "participate in a big way in the $4-trillion Japanese economy," he said. GE "moving quickly to close $15 billion in Japanese acquisitions in the past six months," Welch said. "Japan will assuredly recover in the next few years, the way America's economy rebounded in the '80s, and Europe's and Mexico's did in the '90s," Welch said. He reiterated that GE has moved away from its old emphasis on manufacturing to focus on the more profitable and high-growth area of services. "In 1980, GE was 15 percent services, and 85 percent products," he said. "We will leave the decade at 25 percent products, and 75 percent services." "A service focus changes how we go to market and what we do in the market," Welch said. "Today, instead of selling equipment to finite markets, we are selling ideas and solutions to a whole world that hungers for them. This creates a world in which we can envision literally unlimited growth." Man do I love that paragraph. IBM is doing the same sort of thing. T should get it's act together, and join IBM and GE as natural leaders of spreading American commerce ideas world wide. Greg