General Electric Co. and Banco Santander SA agreed to an asset swap involving mainly European assets.
Under the preliminary deal, GE would sell its GE Money operations in Germany, Finland, and Austria as well as its credit card and auto businesses in the U.K. GE Consumer Finance would buy Interbanca, the Italian commercial bank assigned to Banco Santander after the carve-up of ABN Amro last year.
GE would get $1.5 billion from Santander for its assets and then give back the same amount to Santander for what it would get from the Spanish banking company.
The GE Money units have assets of about $14 billion.
William H. Cary, GE Money's president and chief executive, said in a press release Thursday, "We believe this agreement is in the best interest of GE Money, our individual businesses, and GE's shareholders, and allows us to optimize our portfolio for continued growth and investment while meeting one of GE's strategic objectives of redeploying capital within financial services."
Also Thursday, American Express Co. said it had agreed to acquire GE Money's Corporate Payment Services unit for $1.1 billion in cash. (See
