“cutting production costs and generating synergies in aviation, power, and oil and gas, have constituted the key operational focus of the company in recent years. However, the main aim of the health care segment in the past few years has been improving the organic growth rate.

“the market rewarded GE for the successful spinoff of its retail finance arm, Synchrony Financial, and the sale of GE capital assets. In other words, shareholders were rewarded when GE jettisoned non-core businesses.”

In June, when Flannery was tapped to be CEO, he called it, “the greatest honor of my career,” as well as stating that Immelt “transformed the GE portfolio, globalized the company and created a vision for the GE of the future by positioning the company to lead in digital and additive manufacturing.”

He advised that he wanted "to start with a fresh look around the company overall and, I think, with a sense of urgency," adding that “there are so many things we do well and have always done well and there are clearly some areas we need to improve on, and improve on quickly. No one's happy with the stock price right now or some of the cash pictures that we have had."

Stifel analyst Robert McCarthy noted at the time that GE's stock “underperformance” made the timing of the change unsurprising and in keeping with "investor fatigue with management's continued perceived ungainly portfolio actions."

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