Beth Comstock to Retire from GE

GE announced today that Vice Chair Beth Comstock will retire from GE effective December 31, 2017, after 27 years of service.

Beth Comstock has led GE’s efforts to accelerate new growth through GE’s Business Innovations unit. This unit includes Current, GE Lighting, GE Ventures, and GE sales, marketing and communications. Under Beth’s leadership, GE expanded into new areas of innovation by investing in future technologies, launching new business models, and partnering to help GE work in more entrepreneurial ways, including the development of the FastWorks approach across GE. Under Beth’s leadership, GE’s brand value has grown to more than $44 billion, one of the world’s most valuable and trusted brands. As Chief Marketing Officer, she expanded marketing’s role in innovation and led with a digital-first approach, helping seed GE’s digital transformation. She created the company’s sustainable business strategy, ecomagination, which has generated billions of dollars in revenue and increased the company’s focus on renewable technology while reducing its resource footprint.

John Flannery, GE’s chairman and CEO, said, “Beth’s passion for innovation has opened new markets for GE and changed the way we work. We have relied on Beth to see around corners and lead us to new ideas and invention. Her efforts to push GE into the future have been essential to GE’s growth strategy; including identifying the potential of the Industrial Internet and helping transform GE into a digital industrial company.”

Beth Comstock will continue to lead GE Business Innovations through the end of the year. GE also announced today in separate press releases that Vice Chair John Rice will retire from the company and Vice Chair Jeff Bornstein will leave the company.

About GE

GE (NYSE: GE) is the world’s Digital Industrial Company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive and predictive. GE is organized around a global exchange of knowledge, the "GE Store," through which each business shares and accesses the same technology, markets, structure and intellect. Each invention further fuels innovation and application across our industrial sectors. With people, services, technology and scale, GE delivers better outcomes for customers by speaking the language of industry. www.ge.com

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GEJennifer Erickson, [e-mail]