CEO of GE Reshaping the Future

(Bloomberg) -- About 15 years after General Electric Co. held a high-profile bake-off to determine the successor to then-Chief Executive Officer Jack Welch, speculation has begun over who could be next in line for the top post.

Possible candidates to succeed CEO Jeffrey Immelt come from across GE and include Steve Bolze, head of the power and water unit; Lorenzo Simonelli, the oil and gas CEO; and Vice Chairman John Rice, analysts said in interviews. Shannon O'Callaghan of UBS AG and William Blair & Co.'s Nicholas Heymann were among analysts who discussed potential successors.

A Barclays Plc note on Monday sparked the latest round of speculation and suggested Chief Financial Officer Jeff Bornstein was a front-runner. How GE proceeds depends largely on when the 59-year-old Immelt opts to exit, especially if the next CEO intends to match Welch's two-decade tenure. A sudden vacancy now may favor a seasoned executive such as Rice, 58, while Simonelli, 41, may be better situated if Immelt departs in a few years.

"They clearly have deep bench strength, much deeper than most corporations," said Gail Meneley, a principal at Chicago-based consultant Shields Meneley Partners, whose clients include McDonald's Corp. and Johnson & Johnson. "They will of course place heavy weight on the opinion of the CEO who has been in the seat and knows what it takes."

Industrial Focus

Immelt, CEO and chairman of the 305,000-employee industrial giant since 2001, is reshaping GE around its industrial divisions as he looks to boost margins and energize a languishing stock. Since he took over for Welch four days before the 9/11 terror attacks, the shares have fallen 35 percent while the Standard & Poor's 500 Industrials index has almost doubled. The 2008-09 financial crisis slammed the GE Capital unit, imperiling the Fairfield, Connecticut-based parent company.

Welch started formal succession-planning discussions more than seven years before he stepped down, according to a 2001 Fortune article. In a June 1994 board meeting, Welch brought a handwritten list of 24 candidates separated into three categories: "obvious field," "contenders" and "broader consensus field." The three executives who made it to the final round -- Immelt, Robert Nardelli and James McNerney -- all started in the third category.

In subsequent years, Welch arranged social events for directors to get to know the executives, while not publicly revealing the challengers until after the selection was made. Promotion decisions were made to give the leading candidates broader experience. Immelt was rumored to be a favorite a year before he was announced as the winner.

Retirement Plans?

After more than a decade as CEO, Immelt could step down in the next year, Barclays's Scott Davis said Monday in a note. "Most investors are ready for a change at the top now," Davis said.

Seth Martin, a GE spokesman, declined to comment about the Barclays report, and Immelt hasn't said when he plans to retire. In an October interview, he said, "There will be a natural time to think about a transition, but for right now you're stuck with me."

The timing and field of potential successors could be dictated in part by whether Immelt is successful in his effort to focus GE around high-margin industrial units.

"It very much depends on the success of the current plan," said UBS's O'Callaghan. "If it fails, who knows what's going to happen?"

While GE has a history of grooming candidates internally, a sharp slump in the business could force it to look outside, said Peter Sorrentino, a portfolio manager for Cincinnati-based Huntington Asset Advisors Inc., which owns GE shares.

'Same Kool-Aid'

"I don't know that it's a GE insider because this team has been together long enough and are sort of drinking the same Kool-Aid," Sorrentino said. "If you don't change the scenery you're going to get the same thing."

Immelt had some early missteps, including overpaying for U.K.-based biotechnology company Amersham Plc in a $10.3 billion deal in 2004, said Jack De Gan, chief investment officer of Harbor Advisory Corp. The CEO has earned back some investor goodwill with more recent moves, including the effort to shrink the volatile finance arm, said De Gan, whose Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based firm owns about 100,000 GE shares among its $130 million in assets.

"The market over the last year or so is starting to come to believe that the transformation of GE's portfolio and the rapid decline in the financial business is going to do the trick," De Gan said. "Late '16, early '17 is a time when the market should really be appreciating the work he's done."

To contact the reporters on this story: Richard Clough in New York at rclough9@bloomberg.net; Thomas Black in Dallas at tblack@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edward Dufner at edufner@bloomberg.net Larry Reibstein

Reno Air First Spread

Reno Air first spread its wings on July 1, 1992, with a nonstop flight from Reno to Seattle.

Engineers Rigged this Dreamliner Jet Engine With Parts Made from Amazing Ceramics

Engineers at jet engine proving grounds in Ohio are using a jet engine GE developed for Boeing’s Dreamliner to test engine parts made from a new ceramic super-material. The material could help pave the way to more fuel efficient planes.

The temperatures inside jet engines are so extreme that even parts from high-end titanium alloys require an intricate cooling system to work well. But the new material, called ceramic matrix composite, needs 20 percent less cooling air, which allows engineers to extract more power from the extra heat. “When you drop the need for cooling components, your engine will become aerodynamically more efficient and also more fuel efficient,” Jonathan Blank, who leads CMC and advanced polymer matrix composite research at GE Aviation, told GE Reports.

Top: The GEnx engine with ceramic parts during testing at Peebles in February. The grey orb at the front of engine is the “turbulence control structure.” (Read more here.) Above: A GEnx-1B engine suspended from a Dreamliner jet. A version of this engine will also power the next  Air Force One. Image credits: GE Aviation

GE Aviation is testing the GEnx jet engine with the ceramic parts at its hard-core testing facility in Peebles, Ohio. The parts include inner and outer combustor liners, high-pressure turbine stage one shrouds, and stage two nozzles. CMC stage one nozzles for the high-pressure turbine will be tested on the second build of this demo engine.

GE has spent the last two decades and over $1 billion developing CMCs. The light material, which has one-third the weight of metal, is made from a combination of silicon carbide ceramic fibers and ceramic resin sealed together during a highly sophisticated process, and further enhanced with proprietary coatings. GE recently opened the first CMC factory in Asheville, N.C.

Boeing’s 777X jet will use GE engines as well as avionics and power systems. Illustration credit: Boeing

GE is currently designing CMC parts for the next generation of jet engines like the LEAPand the GE9X. If fact, the GEnx in Peebles is a stand-in for the GE9X, which is still in development and will power Boeing’s new 777X wide-body passenger jet.

GE and its partners will spend more that $500 million on maturing CMC parts this year alone. “The GEnx engine testing campaign, which began in late January, will allow us to demonstrate the functionality and durability of the full suite of CMC hot section components, and help the team lock down the final design for the new GE9X engine by mid-2015,” said Bill Millhaem, general manager of GE’s GE90 and GE9X engine programs.

Although the GE9X isn’t scheduled to enter service until the end of the decade, GE has already received $20 billion (list price) in orders and commitments from airlines like Emirates, Lufthansa, Etihad and others.

But GE isn’t done. All of the CMC components inside the GEnx engine are static, they don’t move. In February, engineers scored animportant breakthrough when they for the first time successfully tested rotating parts made from CMCs inside a jet engine turbine. “Going from nickel alloys to rotating ceramics inside the engine is the really big jump,” Blank told GE Reports. “CMCs allow for a revolutionary change in jet engine design.”

A turbine rotor with blades made from CMCs after a test. The yellow blades are covered with an environmental barrier for experimental purposes. Image credit: GE Aviation.

Havas Won The Silver Program of BA

Turkey's deep-rooted ground handling services company Havas, by integrating the training of in-house training modules provided by British Airways, the airline within the Insignia program 'won the Silver' members in place.

Turkish Airlines Istanbul-Kathmandu Flight

Turkish Airlines (THY) from exiting the runway of the Istanbul-Kathmandu flight of which aircraft where passengers were laid immediately after the captured images into panic eyes.

Epilepsy Attack on Parachuting

Australia images of the moment when a young man jumping in the air airplane parachute had epilepsy attack was meat flesh prickle of the audience. 22-year-old paratrooper to help the trainer has grown.

3 thousand 500 meters from Perth, Australia, jumped with a parachute parachuting instructor with Christopher Jones called the events in the city. But Christopher to stay over 2 thousand 700 meters in the air spent crisis lost consciousness. Began to fall uncontrolled lost consciousness for 30 seconds.

Students return back to the top of the air and saw that move Sheldon McFarlane, Jones opened his parachute and went ashore. McFarlane, "I'm not intervened a parachute
soon be opened automatically. But when I saw the state I wanted to help her. "McFarlane, whether located in Jones said after the ambulance is called and taken home on the young by her mother.

The event that took place in November, but at the end of the week by images uploaded to the internet Jones said.

Check out video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55QUQHm2B5A

Sleeping Time of the Leaders

Sleep is a must for a person. However, we will use the time it can make us successful or unsuccessful. Here are the successful people's daily hours of sleep the path of personal development.

According to the National Sleep Foundation 7 hours to 9 hours of sleep during the day and 18 healthy people in 64 age range. However, the leaders of so many people, the world's most important inventors, does not comply with it. US President Barack Obama for 6 hours a day sleeping, American inventor Nikola Tesla and elektrofizik expert, he prefers to sleep for two hours.

Not easy to be a leader in front of the world's eye. Because the state of governance Keep up what you wear on your way to eat what is poured out everything.

A report in the Daily Mail; leaders ever shed light on unknown aspects:

Their sleep patterns. National Sleep Foundation, the 7 hours to 9 hours of sleep during the day the people in the 18 to 64 age range is reporting that healthy. However, many leaders said that it had complied. Because US President Barack Obama 6 hours asleep, staying alive Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi with two or four hours of sleep. In the United Kingdom the longest period of time and only female prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the country prefers to settle for the 4 hours sleep. Britain's former prime minister, Winston Churchill was sleeping 4 hours of sleep like Thatcher. However, suggests that up to 90 minutes in confectionery made his day. This method is sometimes useful, sometimes seem inconvenient. Short sleep during the day in a survey conducted last year, he underlined that no such structure has a negative effect on sleep.

The report talked about the name of the business they are pioneers, as well as prominent leaders in sleep patterns are also revealed. Thomas is seen as one of human history's greatest inventors Edison, one of them. Edison recorded as 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Who invented the telephone Scottish-born American scientist Alexander Graham Bell, who has spent his time sleeping in a time of 4 to 6. American inventor, Nikola Tesla elektrofizik expert draws attention sleeps two hours a day. The world's largest software company, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, 7 hours, if you prefer the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos 8 hours of sleep. Businessman and real estate mogul Donald Trump in New York City while those who manage with 3 or 4 hours of sleep.

Airshow Avalon 2015(Continued)

SAS Threat to Employee

Ongoing since last week in Scandinavia and the cancellation of dozens of flights and causing thousands of passengers at airports expect to continue the strike of SAS workers. Employees working as cabin crew on aircraft was complaining of a lack of the weight of their wages and working conditions.

Solar Impulse 2 Flight Delays

Single drops designed to circulate around the world without using gasoline "Solar Impulse 2" tomorrow would take off from a private spaces in Abu Dhabi. But the flight was delayed due to unfavorable weather conditions.

An Airbus A380 aircraft wing length up to present "Solar Impulse 2" compared to the same plane with 150 times less weight. Clad in Durgnat project manager working with solar energy "Solar Impulse 2" 's said that the effect of weather conditions on Saturday to postpone the flight.