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With shares of his company's stock down 78% in the past year, General Electric (NYSE: GE) CEO Jeffrey Immelt is deservedly on the hot seat. But in an interview with Bloomberg, Immelt remained defiant in his belief that he's the right man for the job."You're talking to somebody that earned $18 billion last year on $183 billion in revenue, that's outperformed the S&P 500 from a revenue and earnings standpoint over the last five years," he said. "But I don't think any CEO worth his or her salt can sit back and say, it happened to everybody so it's okay."
Then, in what seems like a contradiction to that statement, he said that "The whole damn stock market's down 50 percent. We're down 75 percent, okay? We don't like where we are but it's not like anybody's feeling the groove right now."
One of the concerns among investors has been the company's lack of transparency, and Immelt's propensity for making those ever-rosy "forward looking statements" before reversing course. On January 23, he said that there was no need to cut the company's dividend, and then sliced it from $1.24 to 40 cents on February 27. In April of last year, the company reported disappointing financial results shortly after Immelt described the quarter as having been "in the bag."
Of course many of GE's problems can't be blamed on Immelt, but with as much uncertainty as there is in the economy right now, confidence in the man at the top of the company has never been more important. Poor performance and confident predictions that were quickly refuted by reality have completely destroyed Immelt's credibility among investors. For that reason alone, GE should be on the lookout for a new CEO.
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