Morgan Stanley CEO Sees Little Risk GE Will Become Credit Issue
Morgan Stanley CEO Sees Little Risk GE Will Become Credit Issue
(Bloomberg) -- General Electric Co. has the leadership and resources to pull out of its tailspin and won’t become a problem for lenders or the credit market, Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer James Gorman said.
“The market over-worries,” Gorman said in a Bloomberg Television interview Tuesday. “GE is a fantastic institution. They have tremendous ability to restructure.”
Shares of the manufacturing company have tumbled 56 percent this year, partly on concern its financing arm, GE Capital, will need a large capital infusion and on speculation the performance of its power unit will continue to deteriorate. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. warned of a potential “tail risk” at the financing unit in slashing its price target on the shares to $9 from $12 last week.
GE CEO Larry Culp is raising cash amid mounting pressure to reduce debt, with the company’s shares near a nine-year low and the cost of insuring its bonds against default jumping. GE fell 2.6 percent to $7.64 at 1:37 p.m. in New York.
“Larry Culp is doing a great job,” Gorman said. “He’s been thrown into an incredibly tumultuous situation. I have a lot of empathy, I’ve walked a few miles in those shoes myself.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Erik Schatzker in New York at eschatzker@bloomberg.net;Claire Ballentine in New York at cballentine@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Steve Dickson
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