If GE Capital is benefiting from the slow recovery in the commercial real estate markets, on its home turf of Norwalk it is contributing to the recovery as well.
GE Capital Real Estate quietly leased 39,000 square feet of space at its headquarters at 901 Main Ave. in Norwalk, with commercial brokerage company CB Richard Ellis reporting the transaction. GE Capital and Fairfield-based General Electric Co. each employ some 2,000 people in the county, making them among the largest employers in Connecticut.
In 2009, GE Capital Real Estate certified its headquarters building, which is owned by Stamford-based Building & Land Technology, under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program run by the U.S. Green Building Council. That included buying credits for wind energy to offset all the electricity it uses at the building.
Even as GE sees a rebound in wind turbine orders, it also is seeing the sails fill on its struggling GE Capital Real Estate unit, which cut losses to $82 million, down from $405 million a year ago. Despite that loss, GE Capital increased profits nearly 80 percent from a year ago to $1.5 billion even as revenue remained flat at $11.1 billion.
In October, Bloomberg reported that GE Capital Real Estate executed its first large financing deal since the 2008 credit crisis, extending an $800 million loan to finance New York City-based Blackstone Group”™s purchase of suburban office buildings from Duke Realty Corp.
In the third quarter, GE earned $3.2 billion from continuing operations on sales of $35.4 billion, up 12 percent from a year ago excluding 2010 contributions from NBC Universal, in which GE divested its controlling stake to Comcast Corp.
“I think the real estate turnaround is under way, and that shows up in the third quarter (results),” said Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, in a mid-October conference call with investment analysts. “In GE Capital, you”™re going to have a better commercial real estate year next year than this year.”
It was the first quarter that Norwalk-based GE Capital has come under the same regulatory scrutiny the U.S. government in the past has reserved for traditional banks, and GE CFO Keith Sherin said the Federal Reserve Bank now has a say in any future plans by GE Capital to re-establish dividend contributions to the parent company.
