FACTBOX-Big deal? A look at GE’s recent M&A moves

The Fairfield USA, Connecticut-based company, GE is constantly adding to or divesting businesses from its portfolio, which ranges from making jet engines to loaning money to small and mid-sized businesses.

Since Jeff Immelt took the reins of GE as chief executive officer in 2001, he has bought businesses worth about $279 billion and sold others worth some $78 billion, even before Thursday’s accord to sell a majority stake in NBC Universal to Comcast Corp

Below are some of the largest recent deals by GE:

* GE in November reached an agreement to sell its security business to diversified U.S. manufacturer United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) for $1.82 billion.

* In healthcare, last year the company agreed to pay $860 million for medical-device maker Vital Signs and acquire British laboratory equipment maker Whatman Plc for about $718 million, to expand its healthcare arm beyond the big imaging equipment for which it is best known.

* On the finance front, GE in July 2008 struck an accord to sell its Japanese consumer finance business for $5.4 billion to Japan’s Shinsei Bank Ltd (8303.T). That deal followed an April 2008 accord to buy most of Citigroup Inc’s (C.N) $13.4 billion North American commercial lending and leasing business for an undisclosed price, and the March 2008 sale of its commercial credit-card business to American Express Co (AXP.N) for $1.1 billion.

* In May 2007, chemicals company Saudi Basic Industries Corp (2010.SE) agreed to buy GE’s plastics unit for $11.6 billion. That divestiture followed a series of acquisitions that saw GE buy the aerospace business of Britain’s Smiths Group Plc and privately held oil and gas field equipment maker Vetco Gray.

* The company is not always successful in completing the deals it pursues. Last year, GE had to back down from efforts to sell its century-old appliances and lighting unit, as well as its U.S. private-label credit-card arm. A year earlier, an agreement to buy the diagnostics business of Abbott Laboratories (ABT.N) unraveled before it could be completed. (Reporting by Scott Malone