GE (GE) Plans To Cut Water Consumption 20% By 2012, Halve Stock Price

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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GE (GE) plans to cut its water consumption across the company by 20% between now and 2012. According to Bloomberg "In addition to the first-ever water reduction pledge, Fairfield, Connecticut-based GE also said it intends to have $25 billion in sales of environmentally friendlier products and services by 2010."

All of this is part of the company’s inane “ecomagination” campaign to be more environmentally friendly. Black bears prosper while GE’s shareholders suffer.

Whether GE likes it or not, the PR around its multitude of programs which have little or nothing to do with getting its share price up annoys Wall St. to no end. Investors would like to hear one thing, and one thing only, from the conglomerate’s executives. The company has yet to mount a spirited, logical defense of its structure which includes making and selling jet engines, medical devices, and the TV show "30 Rock". Every time Jeffrey Immelt and his lieutenants take the podium there should be no talk about the company’s plans to save the whales or improve the global quality of life.

Answer one question. Why does the firm’s current structure make sense?

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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