Taylor Swift - Love Story

SPEAKING just a month ago, one of the men who lost the struggle to become boss of General Electric (GE) in 2001 grumbled that the firm had become as soft as a marshmallow. That was before Jeffrey Immelt, who got the job, said he would terminate with extreme prejudice the group’s vast banking division, GE Capital. Mr Immelt’s decision, announced on April 10th, is as momentous and ruthless as any made by an American boss in decades. The logic is impeccable: GE Capital has sapped the world’s biggest industrial firm for a decade and exhausted the patience of regulators and shareholders. And Mr Immelt may find it easier than expected to liquidate in 36 months America’s seventh-largest bank, with $500 billion of assets. What may prove harder is convincing the world that the rest of GE—which runs from lamps to locomotives via medical scanners, oil-drilling equipment, nuclear reactors, jet engines, water-treatment plants and all manner of other electrical and mechanical gear—still deserves to exist.

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