Breaking Up is Good to Do

By KIM BELLARD Last week General Electric announced it was breaking itself up. GE is an American icon, part of America’s industrial landscape for the last 129 years, but the 21st century has not been kind to it. The breakup didn’t come as a complete surprise. Then later in the week Johnson and Johnson, another longtime American icon, also announced it would split itself up, and I thought, well, that’s interesting. When on the same day Toshiba said it was splitting itself up, I thought, hmm, I may have to write about this. Healthcare is still in the consolidation phase, but there may be some lessons here for it. For most of its existence, GE was an acquirer, gobbling up companies with the belief that its vaunted management structure could provide value no matter what the industry. This was most famously true in the Jack Welch days, but since those days it has been gradually shrinking itself, spinning off some of its more problematic divisions, like appliances, locomotives, and much of its once-huge financial services business. It will spin off its healthcare business in early 2023 and its renewable energy and power business in early 2024; its aviation business will keep the GE name.  “A healthcare investor wants to invest in healthcare,” CEO Larry Culp explained. “We know we are under-owned in each of those three sectors, in part because of our structure.” Mr. Culp told The Wall Street Journal, “It was not necessarily a time for grand pl...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Finance The Business of Health Care Aetna conglomerates CVS-Aetna General Electric Johnson & Johnson Kim Bellard Optum Source Type: blogs