Reportedly, John G. Rice, a GE vice chairman since 2005, was appointed to lead the company’s global operations by the board of directors.

Rice will relocate to Hong Kong and be in charge of GE’s growth outside the United States. His appointment is effective Jan. 1, 2011.
 
Rice has served customers, built partnerships and done deals around the world for more than 20 years.He will be responsible for all non-U.S. markets with particular emphasis on high-growth markets such as China, India, the Middle East and Brazil where he will accelerate GE’s efforts to meet customer needs with GE’s leading technology and services. In many of these markets, this includes GE’s “company to country” growth strategy in which GE works directly with governments to meet local needs.

According to GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt, “We expect global sales to be about 60 percent of GE going forward. Our global growth has expanded by about 15 percent a year for most of the past decade and we expect it to continue in the future,”
 
Rice will oversee 12 integrated local organizations that will include business development, commercial teams, finance, controllership and legal. This will include China, India, Southeast Asia, Latin/South America, Russia, Canada, Australia, the Middle East, Africa, Germany, Europe and Japan/Korea.

On the other hand, Nani Beccalli, who has successfully built GE’s global team for the past nine years, will continue to lead Europe, Japan and Korea reporting to Rice. Besides, Beccalli will build and lead a new “One GE” approach in Germany, in which leaders from across GE’s businesses in that market report to Beccalli. GE established a similar “P&L” structure in India in 2009.