what was I thinking?  



Schenectady

General Electric Co.'s $17 billion bid for the power business of French conglomerate Alstom SA will make GE's Schenectady-based Power & Water unit an even bigger industrial powerhouse than it already is.

That's why Steve Bolze, who heads Power & Water, accompanied GE CEO Jeff Immelt to Paris this week to assure French President Francois Hollande that the proposal, which does not include Alstom's transportation business, would maintain jobs and increase investment in France.

If the deal goes through next year as hoped, Bolze will be leading a much larger GE division that will grow from roughly $24 billion in annual revenue to $43 billion.



And Alstom has a huge backlog of power plant service contracts — $40 billion worth — that Bolze said is extremely valuable to GE, which has its own power plant service backlog of about $50 billion.

GE believes that the deal, which includes Alstom's electrical grid business, will add $4 billion in profit to GE over the next three years while cutting expenses by $1.2 billion.

"We will be able to create a more valuable enterprise," Bolze said Wednesday during a conference call with analysts. "Overall, this will improve our competitiveness."

Although Alstom makes steam turbines used in coal and nuclear power plants — which GE makes in Schenectady — GE officials said the deal will not affect local steam turbine manufacturing jobs.

"The announcement today has no impact on the Schenectady site," said GE spokeswoman Chris Horne. "It's about continuing to build the most competitive products and creating value for our customers around the world."

Alstom has a large steam turbine manufacturing plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., said Brian Sullivan, business agent at IUE/CWA Local 301, the union that represents 1,150 hourly turbine plant workers.

GE executives said that Alstom has been a fierce competitor, but is well regarded in the industry. GE's steam turbines are typically used in combined-cycle natural gas plants that use both gas and steam turbines.

"We expect that this purchase will increase our market share and make us a stronger competitor in the balance of the world," Sullivan said.
http://www.timesunion.com/business/article/Already-big-and-looking-to-get-bigger-5443759.php

If it weren't for the unique attributes of Building 273 in which large steam turbines are manufactured, GE would have left Schenectady decades ago.  

GE will never leave Schenectady - there's too much buried underneath (the chemicals probably ate MOST of the skeletons) that they would be responsible for.  You think the Hudson River cleanup is bad??  LOL - it's a drop in the bucket compared to the soil on the GE Parcel.