With Ex-Im hobbled, GE forges ahead with European & Canadian ECA financing

(Export Import Bank, Washington, June 2016) In its June 2016 Report to the U.S. Congress on GLOBAL EXPORT CREDIT COMPETITION Ex-Im noted (on p.55) that in 2015, foreign ECAs acted aggressively to move business away from the United States to their countries. The most notable examples involved General Electric setting up agreements with foreign ECAs. The company signed a $6 billion memorandum of understanding with SACE (Italy) to support oil and gas exports. The company also signed a £7.7 billion (about $11.1 billion) memorandum of understanding with UKEF (UK) to support projects. Finally, GE announced plans to close a gas-engine production plant in Wisconsin and open a new facility in Canada to access EDC (Canada) support.  GE also announced on June 14 that it will use Coface financing to back its gas turbine projects in Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Brazil and other nations as the U.S. Export-Import Bank continues to languish without a sufficient quorum on its board of directors and told AFP on January 13, 2016 it plans to cut up to 6,500 jobs in Europe from the energy units it acquired from France's Alstom last year. "The restructuring plan will touch several European countries and impact potentially 6,500 jobs out of 35,000," a GE spokesman told AFP.