General Electric Canada expands to environment, finance

General Electric Co. is now pushing towards brand new areas of environment and finance in Canada, local media reported on Sunday.

Elyse Allan, chief executive officer of GE Canada, is actively implementing the headquarters' new blueprint for growth and its slogan "Imagination at work," aimed at exploring more areas, reports said.

Fierce competition from China and India has also made it urgent to expand further, Allan said in a recent interview with the Globe and Mail.

Currently, Canada is GE's third biggest market outside the United States, trailing only Japan and the United Kingdom. But with rapid economic growth in China, it could slip to fourth by 2006.

Financial services and environment are the two sectors GE Canada is working on, Allan said, pointing out that Canada's backing of the Kyoto accord, its vibrant energy sector and a resilient housing market have presented GE with unique opportunities for growth not found elsewhere in the company's massive network.

This week, GE Canada announced it will expand into the personal mortgage business by the end of this year, offering financing to home buyers who do not qualify with the major banks.

Already a player in corporate financing and mortgage insurance, the company is looking to capitalize on large numbers of new immigrants and self-employed Canadians who are financially sound, but lack the credit scores to prove it.

"We're looking at where else we can go in the mortgage business, how far we can take that in Canada," Ms. Allan said. "There's certainly a strong market out there for alternative providers of banking services. But because we're so new in it, I don't think we really have defined it yet."

On environment, GE Canada has already made a quite success. Quebec's burgeoning wind power sector has opened up new markets for GE turbines, while Alberta's oil sands, which use massive quantities of water in the drilling process, has provided demand for GE's water purification technology.

"Three years ago, we were not in water," Ms. Allan says."But if you look ahead 50 years, one of the most critical issues the world will be facing is potable drinking water."

Encouraged by its Canada division's initial success in environment, GE headquarters sent officials to visit the oil sands in June and it is now looking to the region as a key piece of its Canadian strategy, contributing to a larger environmental push across the company.

Throughout its global operations, GE is looking to double revenue from its environmental products to 20-billion US dollars by the end of the decade, according to Allan.

Source: Xinhua