General Electric Shares Fall To Lowest Level In Four Years

June 16, 2008 2:34 p.m. EST

New York, NY (AHN) - JPMorgan Chase & Co. cut its recommendation on General Electric Co., which is the world's biggest maker of electricity generation equipment on Monday.

Shares of GE declined by as much as 2.0 percent to $28.46, which is the steepest decline in more than four years, before it retreated to $28.60.

Stocks were pushed lower after JPMorgan reduced its earnings estimate to $2.30 a share from $2.42 over challenging environment for its business operations.

JPMorgan's senior analyst C. Stephen Tusa Jr. downgraded the second-largest U.S. company by market capitalization to "neutral" from "overweight" in his note to investors.

Tusa added in the note that GE, a conglomerate that has segments in media, aerospace, household appliances and elsewhere, will face difficulties in its aviation unit and real estate operations due to market difficulties in both sectors.

In Nov. 17, 2003, the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company, GE's stock traded at $27.67.

The JPMorgan's report also pushed up the shares of the banking firms in the European markets.

The brokerage firm said worst of credit-related writedowns is over for most of the European banks, excluding a few that may writedown as much as $15 billion for the rest of this year.