They are taking managers out of Siemens (SI) in handcuffs and with raincoats over their heads. The FT says that members of the Siemens supervisory board want chairman Heinrich von Pierer to step down due to "twin scandals engulfing Siemens, involving alleged bribery and the alleged financing of a rival to its main union."

Siemens stock should be dropping.

Over at General Electric (GE), the company is run by the best management team in the world. GE shows up on the Fortune magazine list as the most admired company on the planet. 

GE’s stock should be skyrocketing.

But, the picture is quite different from the way it should be. Over the last six months, shares in Siemens are up over 30% and shares in GE are off 5% under-performing the Dow.

As The Wall Street Journal pointed out, GE’s financial services operations were the big earnings driver last year. But, problems in the sub-prime lending market may put an end to that. It doesn’t matter. GE says Q1 earnings will be up between 8% and 13%.

It is almost as if Wall St. doesn’t believe that GE can do that well.

In the fourth quarter of last year, Siemens had revenue of 19.1 billion euros, up 6% from the prior year period. Income from continuing operations rose 18% to 714 million euros. Nice, but not outstanding.

The difference may be this. Almost all Siemens major units showed improvement. Wall St. must think that this will continue. Wall St. is worried about some units at GE. Plastics, NBC Universal. Financial services. Too many unknowns.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

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