58 Business The EconomistJanuary 27th 2018I
N THEIR documentary “The Vietnam War”, Ken Burns and
Lynn Novick, the directors, dwell on the flawed information
that American politicians got from Indo-China. The generals on
the ground focused on the “kill ratio”, or the number of enemies
killed per American or South Vietnamese soldiers killed. That
bore no relationship to victory—North Vietnam quickly replaced
its dead soldiers. And it corrupted behaviour, leading American
troops to embellish numbers and count dead civilians as “wins”.
The curse of rotten information can strike companies, too.
That seems to be the case with General Electric (GE), which has
had a vertiginous fall. Its shares, cashflow and forecast profits
have dropped by about 50% since 2015. On January 16th it dis-
closed a huge, $15bn capital shortfall at its financial arm due to a
revision in insurance reserves. And on January 24th it revealed a
$10bn loss for the fourth quarter. In its core industrial arm, returns
on capital have sunk from 20% in 2007 to a puny 5% in 2017.
GE’s boss, John Flannery, an insider who took office in August,
must clear up the mess made byhis predecessor, Jeff Immelt. He
seems to recognise the gravity of the situation. In November he
gave a frank presentation to investors. This month he suggested
thatGEmight be broken up. Yet an unnerving sense lingers that
no one fully understands what has gone wrong.
Is the conglomerate formerly known as the world’s best-run
firm a victim of weak demand for gas turbines, a low oil price, lav-
ish digital initiatives, timing lags in client payments, morbidity
rates, bad deals, cost overruns or a 20-year squeeze in industrial-
equipment margins because of Chinese competition? You can
imagine GE’s 12-man board blinking at this list, like Pentagon gen-
erals huddled around maps of the Gulf of Tonkin which they are
too embarrassed to admit they do not understand.
Schumpeter’s theory is thatGE’s flow of financial information
has become fantastically muddled. There is lots of it about (some
200 pages are released each quarter) and it is audited by KPMG.
But it offers volume and ambiguity instead of brevity and clarity.
It is impossible—certainly foroutsiders, probably for the board,
and possibly forMr Flannery—to answer central questions. How
much cashflow doesGEsustainably make and where? How
much capital does it employ and where? Whatliabilities must be
serviced before shareholders get their profits?PerhapsGEhas a better, parallel accounting system that it
keeps under wraps. But the publicone reveals eight problems.
First, it has no consistent measure of performance. This year it has
used 18 definitions of group profits and cashflow. As of Septem-
ber 2017, the highest number was double the average one. There is
a large gap between most measures of profits and free cashflow.
Second, GE’s seven operating divisions (power, for example,
or aviation) are allowed to use a flattering definition of profit that
excludes billions of dollars of supposedly one-offcosts. Their to-
tal profits are almost twice as big as the firm’s. It is the corporate
equivalent of China’sGDPaccounting, where the claimed out-
puts of each province add up to more than the national figure.
Third, GEdoes not assess itself on a geographical basis. Does
China yield solid returns on capital? Has Saudi Arabia been a
good bet? No one seems to know. This is unhelpful, given that the
firm does half its business abroad and that the long-term decline
in returns has taken place as the firm has become more global.
Fourth, GEpays little attention to the total capital it employs,
which has ballooned by about 50% over the past decade (exclud-
ing its financial arm). Its managers rarely talk about it and have set
no targets. It is unclear which parts of the firm soak up dispropor-
tionate resources relative to profits, diluting returns.
Fifth, it is hard to know ifGE’s leverage is sustainable. Its net
debts are 2.6 times its gross operating profits, again excluding its fi-
nancial arm. That is high relative to its peers—for Siemens and
Honeywell the ratio is about one. Some of those profits are paper
gains. And the average level of debt during the year is much high-
er than the figures reported at the end of each quarter.
Sixth, the strength ofGE’s financial arm is unclear. The new in-
surance loss will lower its tangible equity to 8% of assets. This is
well below the comfort level, although regulators seem to have
granted it forbearance in order gradually to rebuild its capital.
Seventh, it is hard to calibrate the risk this poses to GEshare-
holders.GElikes to hint that its industrial and financial arms are
run separately. But they are umbilically connected by a mesh of
cross-guarantees, factoring arrangements and other transactions.
Eighth, isGEsure that its industrial balance-sheet accurately
measures its capital employed and its liabilities? Some 46% of as-
sets are intangible, which are hard to pin down financially: for ex-
ample, goodwill and “contract” assets where GEhas booked pro-
fits but not been paid yet. Hefty liabilities, including pensions and
tax, are also tricky to calculate. Based on GE’s poor record of fore-
casting, it seems that large write-downs are possible. On January
24th GEsaid that regulators were looking into its accounting.Time for some command and control
GE’s situation is like that of the global bank conglomerates after
the financial crisis. Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and HSBCdid not
entirely trust their own numbers and lacked a framework for as-
sessing which bitsof their sprawl created value for shareholders.
Today, after much toil, the people running these firms know
whether, say, loans in California or trading in India make sense.
This does not happen naturally. If neglected, financial report-
ing becomes a hostage to internal politics, with different constitu-
encies claiming they bringin sales, while arguing that costs and
capital are someone else’s problem. Mr Flannery is a numbers
guy who wants to slim GEto its profitable essence. But he is
trapped in a financial construct that makes it hard to pursue that
mission intelligently. Until he re-engineers howGEmeasures it-
self, he will be stumbling about in the murk. 7The fog of war
If they are to save the firm, General Electric’s bosses and board need far better informationSchumpeter
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