The US conglomerate told Wall Street analysts that its fourth-quarter results would be hit by a charge of up to $1.4bn to pay for additional credit losses, redundancies and other restructuring measures at GE Capital, its finance unit.
Coupled with the continued disruption in financial markets, the new charge would reduce GE's profits for the year to about $18bn, down from the $19.5bn-$21bn it had forecast in October. Last year, GE had net income of $22.2bn.
News of the lower profits – the third time this year that GE has either missed or been forced to reduce earnings estimates – came as the company said it would continue to shrink GE Capital and cut costs across the group by $2bn next year.