Spring 2008

Colleagues,

I am pleased to share with you our first company-wide citizenship update. Every quarter, I will be providing you some perspectives on our corporate citizenship efforts around the company and new initiatives and engagements relevant to you, our products and our businesses.

Responsible citizenship means different things to different people. At GE, it is not merely a program or a set of good intentions, but a set of behaviors and actions that are integrated with the business strategy of the company. Being a good corporate citizen is a full-time commitment with the same kind of goals, strategies and accountabilities that drive any other part of our business. GE is committed to investing in a framework that is based upon:

• the strong economic performance of the company
• rigorous compliance with legal and fundamental ethical requirements
• taking ethical actions beyond compliance to increase long-term value

In other words, make money, make it ethically, and make a difference. That is what it means to be a responsible corporate citizen.

Highlights from recent months include:

Communications

As several efforts associated with responsible citizenship are taking place across the businesses and the globe, we have created an internal web portal for our employees. This portal includes information about our approach to citizenship, details on our two Signature Programs, Developing Futures™ in Education and Developing Health Globally™, profiles of citizenship activities taking place around the world, and toolkits for HR and communications managers to better share our message to internal and external audiences.

Governance

Late last year, GE was recognized as the top corporate performer in the annual Global Accountability Report, published by One World Trust, a London-based organization that conducts research and advocacy on issues of global governance. The Global Accountability Report is an annual assessment of the capabilities of 30 of the world’s most powerful global organizations from the intergovernmental, non-governmental, and corporate sectors.

Disaster Relief

The GE Foundation was able to respond quickly to disasters around the world, including the earthquake in Peru, flooding in Mexico, fires in California and the recent earthquake in China. Millions of dollars of aid from the GE Foundation and employees was provided to organizations including Red Cross and Red Crescent, UNICEF and CARE. The GE Foundation provided additional assistance to organizations assisting in the relief efforts in the Darfur region of the Sudan. GE Foundation has now committed over $4 million to organizations working to help the victims in this humanitarian crisis.

GE Volunteers

GE Volunteers in over 140 councils worldwide continue to be our greatest ambassadors, with tens of thousands of employees contributing over a million hours of volunteer time across hundreds of projects throughout the world. In March, over 110 GE locations completed 260 murals in the second annual GE Volunteers Planet Paintfest global event. Each mural was painted by a GE employees and retirees and then donated to a local non-profit partner.

Socially Responsible Investors

GE has once again been selected as an index component on the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index and Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index (DJSI). GE has now been a member of the index since 2004, when it was originally selected to join. The results of the annual review will influence the investment decisions of asset managers in 15 countries who have licensed the DJSI family for a variety of sustainability-driven portfolios. In addition, various indices and investment research firms have identified GE as a company committed to responsible citizenship.

Stakeholder Engagement

We continue ongoing stakeholder engagement on issues such as human rights, the environment, supply chain and more. We recently hosted dozens of stakeholders (non-governmental organizations (NGOs), intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), government, regulatory bodies, socially responsible investors, academia, civil society) in three sessions in Geneva, Switzerland, Washington, D.C. and Delhi, India. These sessions covered a variety of issues, focusing primarily on human rights, environmental policy and development, and economic development in emerging markets. As a result of these briefings, we have been able to educate the stakeholders on GE’s position on key issues and build relationships that will enable us to become even more responsible members of the community.

Signature Programs

We are dramatically expanding our Signature Programs, Developing Health Globally™ and Developing Futures™ in Education. Developing Health Globally, GE’s commitment to rural healthcare system improvement, is based on product and service donations. This initiative began in 2004 and has become a $30 million commitment to African communities. In 2007, the program expanded to Latin America, beginning in Honduras, and will continue to expand to other regions of the world. Complementing this initiative are GE Foundation international education grants directed toward supporting disadvantaged populations with fundamental educational needs.

See our feature on the Developing Health Globally Program in Ghana on our corporate web site.

Strengthening education through systemic change is a priority for GE. In the U.S., the GE Foundation Developing Futures program aims to increase overall student performance and raise standards and increase proficiency in math and science. To this end, the GE Foundation has made a long-term, $100-million commitment to U.S. students in five school districts. These five school districts (Louisville, KY, Cincinnati, OH, Stamford, CT, Erie, PA, Atlanta, GA) serve more than 250,000 children. The program is designed to meet an urgent need with a comprehensive effort to strengthen school systems, close achievement gaps, improve math science curricula and student scores and increase college-going rates in targeted schools.

Along with the release of our 2007–2008 Citizenship Report, we will also continue to reach out to employees and businesses on identifying their citizenship priorities. I look forward to providing ongoing updates on responsible citizenship at GE, both at a corporate and business level. As a reminder, our culture and our values manifest themselves through The Spirit & The Letter (PDF), a guide that helps us understand expected standards of conduct as we face increasingly challenging operating environments. We remain committed to the citizenship framework we have established.

Bob Corcoran
VP of Corporate Citizenship