Article: GE profit falls 36 percent, hurt by finance

General Electric Co. said Friday its first-quarter earnings fell 36 percent on sharply lower profits at its troubled finance arm, but the results beat Wall Street forecasts in a glimmer of good news for the struggling company.

The results are further proof of how much the woes of GE Capital, which finances businesses ranging from credit cards to commercial real estate, have hobbled one of the nation's biggest companies.

But the earnings also suggest that GE's strategy of relying on its base of industrial businesses to carry it through a rough year may be paying off, at least for now.

GE, which has a stake in almost every sector of the economy, from light bulbs to ...

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