GE CitizenshipA Letter from Brackett Denniston & Bob Corcoran
GE people turn imaginative ideas into leading products that help solve the world’s toughest problems. Our approach to citizenship is not an add-on for this business — it is core to the way we operate worldwide. Our citizenship priorities help us to achieve business goals, and our business activities and goals are the way that we make an impact on people and the environment.
This means that corporate citizenship at GE is not managed on its own. It is mainstreamed into the way we determine investment and product development priorities; the way we engage with our customers, suppliers, and local communities; and the way we think about business challenges and opportunities.
GE is striving for sustainable growth. Our common success depends on laying down pathways together toward a sustainable reset world:
- Effective government. We are working closely with governments around the world to understand how GE can best contribute to global economic recovery, through either capacity-building; using GE people to train, educate, and participate in leading forums around the world; or identifying investments and joint ventures to stimulate economic activity. We support the development of frameworks of accountability and transparency, along with regulation that is clear, fair, and robustly applied. These elements inform our own approach to corporate governance and our relationships with governments, civil society, and business partners.
- Accelerated innovation. The financial crisis should not halt the development of clean energy and other climate change mitigation and adaptation technologies. We plan to increase our investment in lower emission, higher efficiency technologies to $1.5 billion by 2010 and continue supporting calls for fair and transparent regulation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GE’s investment in clean energy and healthcare makes us a natural partner to governments around the world investing in new greener infrastructure and services to stimulate economic productivity, provide for basic needs and create jobs.
- Mobilized talent. Turning around the performance of economies in these tough times will depend on maintaining and building new skills and mobilizing people, even as companies make employment cutbacks. To reconcile the flexibility needed for economic competitiveness with the security needed by employees and their families, we help employees transition into new positions and more broadly promote education, human rights, and the rule of law wherever we work.
- Sustainable investment. GE remains a key source of lending to companies, consumers, and projects. We are committed to responsible lending and have implemented responsible lending standards across all regions. By staying anchored in what we know, own, and manage and being prepared to hold assets through the cycle, we can continue to provide loans that support long-term customer investments in infrastructure, including healthcare, transportation, and energy.
2009 will bring challenges, and we will face tough decisions around the changing environment for the coming year. The Operational Excellence and thematic sections of this report highlight in more detail how we are positioned to respond.
As we continue to review and reprioritize our commitments, open engagement with stakeholders is crucial. We will work with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders to solve societal problems, steward common resources, and create sustainable growth.
Sincerely,
Brackett B. Denniston III
Senior Vice President & General Counsel
Robert L. Corcoran
Vice President, Corporate Citizenship