Who was the CEO of General Electric during the 2008 financial crisis?

Jeffrey Immelt was the CEO of General Electric during the 2008 financial crisis.

Immelt became GE’s chairman and chief executive in September 2001, succeeding the celebrated Jack Welch. He was therefore already leading the company when the 2008 crisis struck and when the collapse of Lehman Brothers intensified pressure on financial institutions and industrial companies.

GE was unusually exposed because its GE Capital division had become a major source of earnings and depended heavily on wholesale funding. During the crisis, GE Capital faced severe liquidity pressure, while the industrial businesses also confronted falling demand. GE obtained a $3 billion investment from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and received a $139 billion government guarantee for certain GE Capital debt through the FDIC’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program.

Jack Welch is the common wrong answer because he was GE’s previous CEO, serving until 2001. John Flannery and Larry Culp led GE much later, after Immelt’s tenure. Immelt remained CEO until August 2017.