CLIENT
INDUSTRY
Aerospace
Healthcare
Energy
FEATURING
Deals
PwC and GE: Bold Collaboration. Real Transformation.
3
independent public companies created
90+
countries with operations to manage
40,000
activities across the global deal
Delivering sustained outcomes while retaining trust in a historic brand
SITUATION
Multiplying success: How PwC helped GE execute a historic transformation
GE and PwC had already delivered success together — now, we were jointly ready to take on the next challenge. GE would split into three independent public companies. GE especially valued PwC’s experience managing large-scale deal transactions. A key tenet of GE’s approach was to empower 95% of its experienced and trusted internal teams to focus on running the business. Simultaneously, the other 5% would work with PwC and focus its expertise to execute multiple spin-offs with minimal disruption. The teams had to execute across more than 90 countries and enable each business to thrive as an independent public company from Day One.
The scale and scope of the separations was immense, with over 40,000 execution actions across workstreams focused on managing regulatory compliance, retaining talent, maintaining customer and supplier relationships, separating IT infrastructure and optimizing financial and tax implications — just to name a few. Each new company represented a significant enterprise that required its own strategies.
Three companies, three distinct purposes: GE HealthCare, GE Aerospace and GE Vernova
GE’s new companies would embark on a unique mission within each industry.
- GE HealthCare: Driven to create a world where healthcare has no limits by digitizing healthcare, driving productivity to improve the lives of patients and creating meaningful efficiencies for providers, health systems and researchers around the world.
- GE Aerospace: Poised to invent the future of flight, lift people up and bring them home safely as a global aerospace leader in attractive propulsion, services and systems sectors.
- GE Vernova: Set to electrify the world while reducing carbon emissions, helping usher in a new era of energy that is more sustainable and innovative.
Understanding GE’s lean operational culture, PwC nimbly adapted to this culture while leveraging its deals-driven ethos, turning opportunity into growth. Together, the two teams worked to establish three companies as strong independent entities — equipping them with the foundations needed to compete and thrive in their respective markets.
SOLUTION
Solving a complex puzzle
PwC supported GE with a transact-to-transform strategy — an approach rooted in a combination of rigor, continuity and governance. The project included setting up new public companies, restructuring legal entities and separating historically shared services like research and development, human resources, cloud and digital infrastructure and finance. GE's commitment to lean practices and continuous improvement was instrumental in consistently elevating project standards.
PwC helped manage expenses by addressing stranded costs, conducting cost assessments and executing allocations through more than 700 transitional service agreements (TSAs) — contracts that outline temporary support services. What’s more, the team helped set up financial systems for the three new companies, enabling a strong, independent financial infrastructure for each. The team also evaluated accounting decisions, performed 2,000 legal entity separations and allocated more than $4 billion in shared assets and liabilities across all three organizations.
Building integrity into regulatory and tax strategy
The GE and PwC teams addressed tax strategy first because it impacts nearly every part of the business and shapes project deadlines. They then carefully managed the transfer of assets and liabilities, confirming that they were properly allocated to the business — while prioritizing governance around IP, trademarks and patents as a key step in the process. Compliance and operational integrity were considered at every turn.
Throughout the process, the PwC team automated contract review and metadata extraction, saving countless hours across thousands of legal documents. Real-time visual data flows now provided accessible and flexible data for both teams. PwC's global network in 149 countries helped with advice on legal, tax and other issues to enable decision-making and prevent delays.
Focused financials for a seamless transition
Together, the two teams leveraged their historical knowledge of the business — along with PwC’s proprietary algorithms — to automate production of the carve-out financial statements and Form 10 filings with the SEC. They developed SEC-compliant non-GAAP metrics and key performance indicators to help tell each industry-specific equity story, meeting peer and analyst expectations with a successful SEC registration.
The teams developed dynamic carve-out data models that were key to providing a single source of truth for financial information in real time. This data fueled financial reporting and empowered global stakeholders to drive scenario planning and strategic decisions — a real differentiator in the financial statement process.
Human capital: From new roles to new beginnings
PwC helped GE fill new roles and transfer about 12,000 employees across the three new entities within 90+ countries. This meant carefully planning transition timing, addressing benefit plan location complexities and making sure that PwC supported GE’s teams across international markets during the transition.
The spin-offs required dismantling a centralized shared services group and recreating the fit-for-purpose processes, systems and teams within each new organization while keeping everything aligned and efficient. Together, the two teams set up 75 benefits and 95 payroll systems across the global footprint of the new companies. With PwC’s help, GE rolled out upskilling efforts that allowed existing employees to address new challenges. The team implemented new HR systems to handle payroll and benefits separation. Throughout these processes, the teams focused on preserving GE's company culture and workforce stability.
Marketing and internal communications: Maintaining trust and leaning on tech
Marketing and internal communications efforts were vital in providing clear, consistent messaging, maintaining stakeholder trust and supporting a seamless transition. PwC worked hand-in-hand with GE to coordinate and review new employee handbooks, helping GE focus on maintaining a positive employee experience, mapping out current-state processes and drafting Day One manuals with information on everything from separation strategy to guidance on new email addresses and cloud collaboration tools.
Digital technology: Unknotting IT
Within digital technology — which GE calls its IT vertical — PwC helped evaluate, separate and then re-implement the systems, platforms, applications, network and cloud infrastructure that kept the business moving. Simply untangling a standalone piece of digital technology wasn’t an option given the thousands of software systems running congruently. GE and PwC worked together to develop a cloud infrastructure strategy that leveraged modern workplace solutions to drive compliance and future readiness.
The team simplified IT infrastructure and distributed the separation process across 48 ERPs and eight data centers. This also involved contract separation, including collecting and reviewing more than 200,000 supplier documents and using AI and analytics tools to review more than 7,000 contracts, identifying clauses for easy transitions, preparing for negotiations and, when necessary, determining alternative actions.
Junction: The digital nerve center formed a foundation for success
At the core of everything was Junction, a PwC-developed tool and digital “nerve center” leveraged by both teams for decision making and insights. Junction served as a central hub — and single source of truth — for global separation information across the GE portfolio. To maintain focus on project goals, PwC tailored the platform to align with GE's operational workflows and strategy.
Junction tracked new data in real time by combing disparate information streams — including finance and HR — enabling stakeholders to access accurate information and reporting with just a few taps. Junction also showed GE decision makers a view of dependencies, meaning what one function needed from another to complete their separation activities.
Custom decision-making dashboards saved GE thousands of hours in meticulous project tracking. As an added benefit, Junction was easy to use because it was built with Microsoft Cloud technology and incorporates tools that employees were already familiar with. The cloud-based tool helped GE and PwC team members at every level achieve global collaboration across more than 40 global workstreams in over 90 countries. With Junction, the two teams could identify high-risk operations and quickly remedy them.
RESULTS
GE’s new era of innovation
The team knew rigor, agility and strong governance were key to hitting each milestone, placing a strong focus on adopting GE’s lean methodology — a hallmark of its culture. This approach emphasizes continuous improvement and increasing productivity to deliver the highest value to customers. Throughout the separations, GE’s lean approach improved efficiency and helped promote consistent quality across all functions and business units.
The entire project — which encompassed coordinating and managing more than 40,000 execution actions across 90+ countries – benefited from clear deadlines and KPIs set at the very beginning, allowing for precise progress tracking and adherence to critical performance standards. In a large separation, governance is essential, and PwC leveraged its worldwide professional network to help make sure that the details were considered across workstreams and industries.
GE brought valuable insights and strategy to navigate the new business landscape, while PwC's deep global expertise in separation management helped confirm that all parties were aligned.
Three new companies
PwC helped GE strategically separate into three distinct companies, each focused on specific growing sectors: aerospace, healthcare and energy. This move allows each entity to hone its expertise and drive innovation within its industry. The agile approach also means each company can better serve modern customers by delivering specialized, tech-driven products and services tailored to their unique — and ever-evolving — needs.
“Teaming up with PwC was a game-changer for GE. PwC’s experience and guidance made the complex process of splitting into three independent companies smooth and efficient. Now, each of our new entities — GE HealthCare, GE Aerospace and GE Vernova — are positioned to lead in its sector and deliver unparalleled value to our customers. We couldn’t have done it without them."
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