Last night we told you the widely held dow component was close to a deal to sell its real estate portfolio. What we didnt know is that that was just the beginning. The company is planning to essentially shed its entire finance unit. The first move is a 26. 5 billion sale of most of its real estate and mortgage portfolio to blackstone and wells fargo. But ge is not stopping there. The company will dramatically slim down ge capital over the next few years and buy back 50 billion worth of stock. That buyback ties apple for the biggest single buyback ever. Wall street loved the moves and sent shares higher by about 11 on the day. Mary thompson has our look at the deal and the new ge. Reporter in its most aggressive move in 14 years of ceo, jeff plans to slash the ge finance unit. Once a strength for ge seen as a drag now. We felt from an investors standpoint this was the right time. Reporter right time because low rates mean yield hungry buyers pay for these assets and selling them mean ge may be clear to come out from a stricter Regulatory Regime mandated for ges systemically important. The news sent the stocks on a 52 week high earning praise from investors. I think ge is doing the exact right thing. Now you can understand the company. Reporter the structure puts ge on the path to be a pure industrial play a Company Providing tools to build out infrastructure around the globe and one that wont be penalized for its financial business. At the end of the day, being able to rerate the company is a premium Industrial Company with a very small Financial Service business that really complements the Industrial Assets is really a valuecreating move. Reporter struggle to generate stocks up 30 since he took the helm. I think he heard the critics and hes answering them. Reporter by 2018 90 of ges profits come from its Core Industrial businesses including power and water, Aviation Health care oil and gas and transportation. Thats up from just over 50 last year. Profits from finance drop as ge unloads 300 billion in assets including global and Consumer Lending bids overbusinesses over the next two years. Client jet engines of energy and health care equipment. Even as it undertakes the massive restructuring, ge expects to be profit forecast for 2018. It will make up for lost of ge capital by growing profits at its industrial businesses and with a record 50 billion Stock Buyback Program that will siflgtly shrink its shares standing. All moves designed to keep inves engaged with the 123yearold company starts yet another new chapter. For nightly Business Report, im mary thompson. So why would a company want to part with a unit ge capital, that accounts for two out of every 5 it earns in profit . Bill george is here to discuss. Hes former ceo of metronic. Take us in the mind of the ceo, in the board room. Why do you do this . Well i think tyler, jeff is taking ge back to roots. Ge Transportation Health care industrial businesses where it can use it. Research development, Capital Expenditures and by the way, its financing clout on industrial roles. But the Consumer Finance business has gone the wrong way. Its very hard to get good returns today in the new regulatory era were in this field and if youre not a bank the size of wells fargo. And i think that getting rid of the real estate these things really made ge into a conglomerate and i think the market couldnt figure it out and customers couldnt figure it out. The conglomerate model, we didnt challenge it because he was managing so well but i think today, it doesnt make sense and so i think the unity it has makes a lot of sense and keeping the financing. Jeff came to mittvisit me when he was in charge of the imaging business and said we use the financing to support our sales of mris and cat scanners and all the equipment they sell. The same as jet engines and the energy business. They use these very effectively but thats different than the Consumer Finance and i think ge got way too dependent when jack was ceo. The only question i have to ask is why didnt he do it sooner . A lot of people ask the same question particularly in light of whats been an underperforming stock price. In this case bill it gives them more sort of strategic focus. Smaller is better. They wont have as much profit now. Theyre hoping i guess, theyll have it later on. Do you see, you mentioned the medical imaging business. Sochl some people see once did in a company focused on industry and infrastructure. I wouldnt agree with that. I think ge should be doing more not less than health care. I think the opportunities, tyler, as a growth Industry Health care is where its at. Energy is too, by the way. And i think using their technology and their innovation and the kind of things he did in the energy side ecoimagination same thing with health care tyler. Thats the sweet spot. This is the real ge that just is taking the company back too and i think thats exactly where they should be and they should be pushing large equipment. Thats what ge does. This is what they do well and i see no reason why they wouldnt continue to try to do this around the world and build Global Business in a rapidly growing market. This is now jeff imels company totally. He got rid of Nbc Universal that produces this program and now a big part of the welch legacy of the old General Electric right . Quick thought . Well i think jeff went too slow on that but i think he feels he needed to bring, he knows the lead time to develop the innovation new ideas, and he wanted to go to a slower transition. I wish he had done it sooner than 13. 5 years, certainly in the nbc side. A few years ago, i thought get rid of nbc and that made sense. This makes sense. Could have done it a few years earlier but basically restructuring the Balance Sheet too. Hes downsizing and taking a lot of capital off the table. All right. And doing a lot in that regard and giving shareholders something closer to industrial hightech pure play and thats where jeff wants to go his background and i think its the absolute right thing to do because most of ges executives come out of these fields. Yes. And so i think youll see the company be much more of a success in the future and i think its customers its employees and shareholders will rally around the new ge not being caught up in the ego being the biggest, caught up in being the biggest niche in their fields and having an integrated strategy as they have. Thank you so much for being with us always enlightening bill george with Harvard Business school and former ceo. What does this mean for investors . Follr rbc capital markets. Dean what do you think . They fell in love with the move today. Are they going to stay in love . Well tyler, you dont see big cap stocks of ges size going up almost 11 . There was, this was a catalyst and i think what youre also is important of what happened today is there are so many pms that were under way for ge and its a big index stock. Suddenly you get a catalyst and it causes you switch from greed into fear and you had almost panic. We call this a meltup. Stock was almost 10 times its average daily volume. How do you feel about this stock three years down when they have exited some of the businesses that bill and i were just talking about . Well it was actually, bill was making great points. If you project and follow through this whole plan and do these buybacks you pare ge down with Big IndustrialService Based businesses with a healthy dividend and investor friendly and derisk the company significantly. I think thats what the marke telling you today. What rating do you have on the stock and i note that you had earlier a 28 share price target. Will you revisit that . Sure. We have an outperform rating on ge and interesting in the beginning of the year, we named ge as our top pick of stocks most likely to make a transformational portfolio change. What surprised us and i think what surprised the market is they did it all at once. It wasnt just the next phase. So were looking at this now and price targets under review. We still feel very good about how the company has laid out this plan. If you want to project out three years, you start looking at a stock thats growing 10 , pays 3. 2 dividend yield that has been derisked that feels in this low growth environment really nice. I should point out you had impression calls on General Electric earlier this year in terms of transforming transaction. Thank you, tyler. Thank you dean. Good to be with you. Thank you. Blackstone the private equity firm one of the buyers of ges Real Estate Today and the company made another deal buying Real Estate Trust excel and that expands as a real estate powerhouse. Diana olick takes a look. Reporter there i real black stone doesnt touch. Landmark offices, apartment buildings, Single Family rental homes, medical buildings, student housing, hotels. 81 billion worth of Investor Capital under management. Now as part of ges health cleaning blackstone adds 14 billion more. In this market environment, its very difficult to place a lot of money all at once and given the amount of money that someone like blackstone is clearly looking to put to work in the market it would be very difficult to cobble together a portfolio of that magnitude one or two properties at a time. Reporter about 3 billion in Office Properties in chicago, Southern California and seattle as well as billions more in commercial property than mortgages across europe australia, and mexico. They must have a relatively bullish outlook on the sector overall, otherwise we wouldnt be talking about the kind of dollar volumes theyre clearly talking about in this case. Blackstone has been in the news most recently in its hotel maneuvering after its 26 billion leveraged buyout of Hilton Worldwide in 2007, it took the Company Public again late last year. That was just after the sale of san diegos Landmark Hotel del coronado last summer which real estate chief john grey described to jim favor. We have to sell. We share models buy, pick sell it. Reporter but now the nations largest landlord in the Single Family rental market with more than 45,000 properties under its Invitation Homes and continues to buy Distressed Properties albeit at a slower pace. If the peak were 150 million a we blackstone is taking advantage of a Real Estate Market still in the early stages of recovery with the exception of red hot apartments most sectors still have a long runway ahead. With plenty of potential for profit. For nightly Business Report, im diana olick in washington. Back above 18,000 thats where the Dow Jones Industrial average ended today. And it largely had ge to thank for it. The Dow Jones Industrial is 98 points to close at 18,057. Nasdaq grows 21 points to 5,000 again and s p 500 notched a gain of 10 points and that puts it back above 2100. For the week all three indexes were up more than 1. 5 . Well it could well be the highest level meeting between the two countries in more than 50 years. President obama coming face to face with cubas leader raul castro at a summit in panama. Michelle carusocabrera has more on this historic moment. Reporter the president arrived in panama last night and learned today he spoke with raul castro over the phone on wednesday and that he and castro are expected to see each other at the opening dinner that begins tonight at 9 00 p. M. Tomorrow is the big event th two are expected to hold a discussion though not an official meeting. We certainly do anticipate that they will have the opportunity to see each other at the summit tomorrow to have a discussion. So we will keep you updated as to any interaction between the leaders. Reporter this wouldnt be the first time the two have met. They shook hands briefly in september of 2013 when both in south africa for Nelson Mandelas funeral. This will be the first time theyre together since they announced the decision to reestablish diplomatic relations in december. One of the issues cubas inclusion on the state sponsored terrorism. Removing cuba one of the changes to pave the way for reopening of embassies that have been shut for 54 years and make it easy for banks around the world to do certain kinds of Financial Transactions with the sanctioned island and just last night, the state department officially recommended removing cuba from the list. Its been on the list since 1982 one that provided sanctuary to mark rubls and members of ata a vast separatist movement in spain. Others iran sudan and syria. Raul castro is the first cuban leader to attend the summit of the americas because the u. S. Has historically opposed a castro attending the event. We are already seeing changes and hemisphere. Michelle carusocabrera for nightly Business Report. One person a long supporter of improving relations with cuba is Hillary Clinton and the former secretary of state and first lady is expected to announce on sunday that she will enter the race for president in 2016. It is believed clinton will make her announcement via social media. Coming up on market monitor, loves cost cutting companies. A couple names to get you at least 20 over the next few years. The apple watch hits stores for the first time today. Not that you could buy one at a store. Preorders only and those had to be made online but in the store you could get a chance to se try one on put it through the paces and by all accounts, the watch appears a success. Within hours, most if not all models seem to be totally spoken for. If you want one, now at june at the earliest. China, top of the line model that costs in the neighborhood of 20,000 took less than an hour to sell out. Around the world, people lined up to test out the new gadget. Weve come to see the watch. I ordered the watch last night at like 3 15 a. M. We hadnt bought one but probably going to come back and get one. My kids are asking for iwatches and im like no. Like an iphone, updates every year. Some people are skeptical now but time to come i think everyone will have one. Shares of smantic rallying on a late report. Thats where we begin tonights market focus. The Company Reportedly exploring a sale of the veritas Cyber Company unit that could fetch more than 8 billion. Shares were 5. 5 higher that finished at 25. 58. New details tonight on ebays split from its paypal unit. The two companies will still be interdependent on one another even after they split. Ebay agreed to not create own Payment System for five years after the split and paypal wont create an online marketplace. So there. Shares up a fraction to 57. 34. Amazon one step closer apparently to its dream of delivering items with drones. The company won federal approval to fly drones and there are a lot of restrictions. They cant fly higher than 100 faster than 100 Miles Per Hour thats pretty fast and have to stay within the operators line of sight and have to be during the day and private property so the Company Still has a long way to go before they can fly you your next shipment of food. Shares off a fraction to 382. 65. Nokia expanding sale of maps business. Uber and the private equity business valued 2 billion. Shares popped today 4 to 8. 06. Shares of tech mira higher on approval of fda approved drug. Clinical trial of an ebola treatment drug. Last july regulators put the drug on hold until more could be provided on safety and efficacy. Stock popped to 18. 19 for the close. And our market monitor tonight has unloved stocks she thinks investors should own in their portfolio. Shes diane with 180 billion under management. Hi dianna. Good to have you. Nice to be here. First, your overall view of the market at todays levels of two weeks in a row of gains. Havent seen that in quite a while and back above 18,000 close to 5,000, 21,000 on the s p. I was glad that the market paused during the First Quarter to let the Commodity Prices sink in and let companies figure out how they were going to react and now, i think that were going to be very interested to see what the First Quarter earnings brings and i think the market is stronger from here. What do you think First Quarter earnings are going to bring and will the rising dollar be the excuse dejour . I think the dollar will have an impact but when we talk to companies with overseas sale much have a stronger europe or japan to sell products to. Lets move on to some of your picks. You liked ge before let the record show own it before todays news. Do you love it even more now . I do. I would hardly its one of the largest positions. We still believe theres at least 20 upside. Its selling at 2. 2 times, price the book and its now reaching the point where in terms of dollar prices and it hasnt seen since the crisis. You must feel very good today because its been a long wait for ge. I feel good for our clients. All right. Good enough. Lets move on to your next one, which is another longtime unloved stock and thats citi. Yes. And that isnt having much love this year, but we think it too is continuing its restructuring plans in terms of asset sales and Central America and eastern europe. And trading below book value. And so while, you know, it passed the c card the stress test earlier this year we think it has room to run over the next two years. And third is chesapeake energy. A stock with either a history or a past. Were gingerly pacing our investments in chesapeake right now. Its trading below price to book. Generally a p trade better on cash flow and trade 2. 5 times price to cash flow and what i feel good about is that it has over 8 billion of money in the bank so it can wait out longterm low commodity environment. Is your investment in chesapeake an expression of bullishness about the sector broadly or about the particulars of this company . We have been Underweight Energy for most of 2014 and continue to be for 2015. We want to take opportunities that the market is presenting like chesapeake. Diane, thank you very much. Great picks and thanks for moving quickly through them. We appreciate it. Thank you, tyler. Diane jaffey. Netflix, the lifted shares of the Video Streaming Service the notes saying it doesnt agree with the competition concerns. Reflected in the stock price. Shares rose about 3. 5 to 454. 67 on netflix. Citi adding General Motors sending shares higher today. Recent pullback as a buying opportunity and said the company has very strong fundamentals. Shares up slightly today to 36. 57. Coming up breaking up can be hard to do but some visionaries are trying to ease the pain of divorce. Trying to build a. Here is what to watch next week. Busy week. Earnings season in full swing. The biggest part of it the big banks start reporting early in the week. J. P. Morgan wells fargo and many many more. The federal reserves beige book, love that beige book wednesday and could offer insight on the health of the economy. On the data front, a ton of potentially marketmoving reports including retail sales, Housing Starts jobless claims and those, folks, are some of the highlights of next weeks agenda. And finally tonight, divorce can be a messy business but as jane wells tells us some people are turning that messy business into good business. Reporter the luxurious gid di and putnam in Saratoga Springs is a favorite spot for weddings and the spot that katherine and johnathan who dont want their last names used got divorced. It definitely suited our needs. We have children and early on in the process, we made a decision to be the best parents possible. Reporter the resort is the first u. S. Venue for the Divorce Hotel. Already a Successful Company in the netherlands. Its purpose . Low priced quickie divorces for ten grand. Check in marry on friday and check out, divorced on sunday. We launched it in december of 2014 and since then weve done 12 divorces. We just finished our 12th yesterday. Reporter this isnt the only unusual business in the divorce industry. Another company will finance your divorce battle in exchange for a piece of your settlement assuming you get one. Balance point divorce funding created by stacey knapp who funded it with her own divorce settlement. We havent lost money on a case yet, so it will happen. I am sure it will. Reporter with balance point, a lower estimates how much a divorce will cost knapp funds it in portions and the more she invests, the higher her percentage on the back end but never goes above 25 . She wont, however, fund everyone. Ive actually had somebody say to me i wont settle ever. And i said really nice meeting you. I cant do mig for you. Because at the end of the day, it has to be about business because i have investors to answer for. Reporter those running the Divorce Hotel agree this is only for people who want to end things quickly and relatively painlessly. It was nice to get away for a weekend in the beautiful setting where you can relax, get away from family friends, and really focus on what needed to be done. Reporter and though it can be romantic spending the weekend here no one has had second thoughts. Every couple has left saying theyve gotten along better than they ever have but not getting back together. Theyve made that decision. Reporter for nightly Business Report, im jane wells. Heartbreak hotel maybe. The Divorce Hotel. All right. Thats it for nightly Business Report for tonight. Im tyler mathisen. Thanks so much for watching. We hope you all have a really good weekend and well see you back here on m ay it doesnt really matter if youre old and grey its all right, i say, its okay listen to what i say its all right, were doing fine it doesnt really matter if the sun dont shine its all right, i say, its okay were getting to the end of the day are you the guy that reported it . Yeah. How long was she gone . About 3 days, is it . knocking on door miss barker