With talk about a multibillion-dollar deal to sell NBC Universal to Comcast burbling away, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt popped the top on a $250 million venture fund designed to buy stakes in small healthcare technology companies.

“What we’re trying to do is embrace the venture community, try and do a series of early-stage and later-stage type investments,” Immelt said in an interview. “We don’t do everything inside our four walls.”

Competing venture capitalists might consider Immelt’s embrace more of a bear hug. GE is taking a similar approach to the energy industry. It has a stake in A123 Systems, the battery maker that was one of the best-received initial public offerings of the year. Scott Malone, our reporter who interviewed Immelt, notes that taking stakes in smaller companies rather than buying them outright gives GE more flexibility. It gains exposure to a wider array of technologies, any one of which could take off.

“GE is in the midst of a $6 billion drive to revamp its healthcare arm, called ‘Healthymagination,’ that includes rolling out products intended to help hospitals and other health providers cut costs and making investments to encourage the adoption of electronic medical records,” Malone reports.

Might be just cosmetic, but a new name would be a good place to start.

Speaking in New Delhi, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt said “Discussions are ongoing whether it is an IPO or another partnership,” in response to a question on whether GE was talking to Comcast to sell a stake in the fourth-placed TV network and movie studio. With Vivendi possibly just a couple weeks away from unloading its 20 percent stake in the NBC venture, and all the talk this week about Comcast gathering coins to add the content trove to its cable mix, it might seem as if Immelt is trying to conjure something like a rabbit from a hat – or a peacock from a beret.

GE and Comcast are discussing a deal under which the largest U.S. cable firm would take control of 51 percent of NBC Universal with GE, which has the right of first refusal to pick up Vivendi’s stake if the French company exercises its annual option to sell, taking the rest. “The capital markets have definitely improved,” Immelt said. There is reason to see stability and some optimism for the future,” he said.

Set aside for a moment that the sickly advertising market that NBC already faces. The market for IPOs is picking up nicely right now, but is still in an early stage of recovery, making do with a ragtag bunch of real estate investment trusts and Chinese new-market plays. What effect do you think a big media play splashing into that pool would have on investor demand for new issues?

General Electric Co Chief Executive Jeff Immelt went to Michigan, the bleeding heart of the U.S. industrial heartland, on Friday to call for a resurgence in American manufacturing.
But even as he warned against relying too heavily on the financial industry to drive economic growth, he subtly set up a defense of the largest U.S. conglomerate’s hefty finance arm.

Analysts and investors are worried that the Obama administration’s proposed overhaul of U.S. financial regulations could force GE to spin off GE Capital, which has businesses ranging from leasing jet planes to investing in commercial real estate.

“We also need a financial system that is built around helping industrial companies to succeed,” Immelt told the Detroit Economic Club. “GE is an important part of this financial services approach. We plan to focus GE Capital on financing small- and medium-sized customers in industries that we know the best.”

He said that after first contending that the U.S. had come to rely too much on Wall Street wizardry and consumers who spend more than they earn to drive prosperity. Disparities in pay reflect that imbalance, he said.

“You know something is wrong when a mortgage broker is pulling down $5 million a year while a Ph.D. chemist is earning $100,000,” Immelt said.

Immelt did not directly address the proposal on Thursday. But earlier this week, he told GE employees that the largest U.S. conglomerate would fight any effort to force it to separate GE Capital from its industrial core.

Several analysts this week warned that the administration’s current proposal, which would prevent large financial institutions from having nonfinancial operations, would likely require such a separation. However, they pointed out that even the current proposal — which would be subject to negotiation in Congress — allows a five-year grace period.

“The government is unlikely to do anything to cause major disruptions to a huge company like GE until the market recovers significantly, especially since GE has not been blamed for any problems in the financial system,” wrote BernsteinResearch analyst Steven Winoker, in a note to clients.

How big is the $700 billion financial bailout package for the markets? Big enough that a change in perception as to whether it will pass can overshadow a cut in outlook from industrial and financial powerhouse General Electric.
 
Initially down after GE slashed its quarterly and full-year forecast, Dow Jones futures turned higher in later pre-market trade on optimism that the bailout will go ahead with only minimal friction in Congress. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt said persistent woes in its finance arms, which account for half of its business, were to blame for the dimmed outlook. 
 
GE stunned Wall Street in April with an unexpected drop in first-quarter profit. It blamed the global credit crunch and the collapse of Bear Stearns for pushing its finance arms lower. These are the businesses at the root of the outlook problems now. At least the market is getting some warning this time — in the spring, GE sprung the bad news on investors in its results statement.
 
GE shares were down early, sagging to $23.50, off more than $1 from Wednesday’s close. If they hit $20.25 they will have lost half of their value since Immelt became CEO. 
 
Given the size and breadth of its financial biz, it would be no surprise to see GE in line for some bailout money. But the company seems to be saying it is fully capable of managing its own problems for now. If the market starts to sense, though, that the profitable parts of GE, the industrial stuff, will be the next shoe to drop in the economic slowdown…look out.

Deals of the day:

* Washington Mutual , the large U.S. savings and loan company beleaguered by mortgage losses, has approached private-equity firms about a potential takeover after a line-up of listed firms showed reluctance, the Wall Street Journal said citing people familiar with the situation

* Hynix Semiconductor said it would sell part of its stake in a Chinese joint venture to partner Numonyx for $100 million, as Numonyx seeks to raise its control over the Hynix-led chip plant.

* South Korea’s antitrust watchdog said it had granted conditional approval for eBay Inc’s plan to buy a controlling stake in South Korean online retailer Gmarket.

* French insurer AXA and Munich Re’s insurance unit ERGO are among the preliminary bidders for a small South Korean life insurer put up for sale, a source at the domestic insurer said.

* China’s Xuzhou Construction Machinery Science & Technology said that it will buy operating assets worth 5.31 billion yuan ($778 million) from its state-run parent via a share placement.

* Grange Resources will merge with Australian Bulk Minerals in an all stock deal to create a A$1 billion ($833 million) mining company, Grange said in a statement.

Will GE meet its lowered profit forecast for 2008?

With Japan’s financial sector facing tighter regulations in consumer lending and the grinding global credit crunch and slow economic growth stifling the leasing industry, what better time for two big companies in these industries to get hitched? Orix, Japan’s largest leasing company, and credit card firm Credit Saison are said to be considering a merger that would create a finance group with $106 billion in assets. Credit Saison’s stock surged 11.2 percent on the news, while Orix’s rose 2.6 percent. Japanese consumer finance is a legal and regulatory battlefield that General Electric and Citigroup both recently fled. “We may not just be talking about these two companies. We could see a flurry of consolidation after this,” said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management.

The air over Beijing may not be clean enough for long-distance runs in the park but foreign investors are enjoying some clear air with details on the country’s landmark anti-monopoly law, specifying turnover thresholds that will trigger a government review of proposed mergers. All business combinations must be cleared by the Ministry of Commerce if the joint global revenue of the companies involved exceeds 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) or 2 billion yuan in China, the People’s Daily reported on Tuesday. Even then, a review would not be needed unless two or more of the firms each had more than 400 million yuan of revenue in China during the previous accounting year, the paper said.

Other deals of the day:

* Swiss Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, has agreed to buy Barclays‘ life assurance portfolio for 753 million pounds ($1.48 billion) in cash, even as it wrote down more credit assets.

* Private equity group TPG plans to study Asciano’s full-year results before deciding what to do about its A$2.9 billion ($2.7 billion) takeover approach, which the Australian port and rail operator has rebuffed.

* Japanese drug maker Daiichi Sankyo will launch an open offer to buy a further 20 percent in India’s Ranbaxy Laboratories on Aug 16, the Indian firm said.

* Scottish drinks maker AG Barr said it had agreed to buy exotic juice firm Groupe Rubicon Limited for 59.8 million pounds ($118 million) in cash in a deal to expand into the growing juice market.

* French market data group Ipsos said it has obtained an option from WPP to buy the TV audience measurement assets in the European Union owned by Taylor Nelson Sofres if WPP’s bid for the company is successful.

* Ping An Insurance plans to buy up to 10 percent of pharmaceutical firm Yunnan Baiyao in a deal that could be worth about $260 million at current market values.

* The Panzhihua steel group, one of western China’s top steel makers, will not change its previously announced merger plan, the group’s three listed units said after negative rumors about the plan caused their shares to plunge.

* A Lockheed Martin subsidiary plans to acquire Tenix Group’s interest in RLM Holdings, a radar, systems engineering and integration and logistics management business, LocKheed said in a statement.

* Newmont Mining said it was considering strategic options, including a sale, for its 50 percent stake in Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines, one of Australia’s largest gold mines.

Tech titan Bill Gates appears to be making the transition from head of the biggest software company in the world to a man comfortable taking out the trash. His investment company, BGI, which owns 2.3 percent of Waste Management, is telling the company its unsolicited $6.2 billion bid for Republic Services is ill-advised and that it should walk away. While his investment vehicles have stakes in dozens of companies, they have kept low profiles over the years and Gates has not traditionally been known as an activist investor. But BGI didn’t mince words in its letter to Waste Management’s CEO and board, disclosed on Thursday. “We can only assume your ill-timed and poorly conceived pursuit of Republic is designed to disrupt what you perceive as a competitive threat to your position in the market,” wrote BGI. “An acquisition of Republic will most certainly burden the company with excessive debt, distract your management, result in significant regulatory burdens, and thereby reduce shareholder value,” it said.

Yahoo’s annual investor meeting today will be a magnet for discontent over the company’s failure to reach a merger deal with Microsoft and complaints about the company’s past performance. But any real action to reshape Yahoo’s course is likely to take place only after the meeting, once activist investor Carl Icahn and two outside nominees join an expanded 11-member board as part of a deal with the company to avoid a proxy battle. Far from a showdown over control of Yahoo, the annual meeting has the makings of a noisy media circus where the issue of whether Yahoo should remain independent or not competes with older protests over executive pay and human rights policies. For while the exercise of shareholder democracy will allow investors small and large to vent over what might have been, the outraged speeches are likely to have only symbolic effects since Icahn withdrew his overt challenge to Yahoo’s board. “I am sure that Yahoo management will take a verbal beating,” Jim Friedland, an analyst Cowen & Co, said. “I just don’t think that the annual meeting is where the debate over Yahoo strategy is going to take place.” In a blog post on Thursday, Icahn downplayed the importance of the event, saying he plans to skip the meeting himself.

Spanish solar power company Fotowatio said that General Electric’s Energy Financial Services unit had bought 32 percent of the company for 150 million euros ($233.5 million). Grupo Corporativo Landon — a holding company for the Gallardo family, which owns Barcelona-based pharmaceutical group Almirall — also bought a 17.5 percent stake for 75 million euros, the company added in a statement. Fotowatio said that together with its new partners, it had earmarked 2.5 billion euros to invest by 2012 in photovoltaic and thermosolar plants in Spain, Italy, the United States, and other countries. Currently, the company has four installations, with a total installed capacity of 60 megawatts, which it plans to expand to 800 MW by 2012. Photovoltaic (PV) power has boomed in recent years in Spain due to generous government subsidies, but these will be slashed next year.

Other deals of the day:

* French power giant EDF walked away from a 12 billion pound ($23.8 billion) deal to buy British Energy early on Friday in a dramatic U-turn that could delay Britain’s plans to relaunch its nuclear program.

* Kingfisher, Europe’s biggest home improvements retailer, has agreed to sell its Castorama Italy business to French DIY firm Groupe Adeo for 560 million euros ($871.9 million) in cash.

* Spanish bank Banco Sabadell said its fully owned BIDSA unit has agreed to acquire 4.9 percent of broadcaster Antena 3 from Grupo Rayet for about 85 million euros ($132.3 million).

* French bank BNP Paribas will buy a stake in Anglo-Dutch private bank Insinger de Beaufort, and merge it with its Dutch and UK operations, creating a 10-billion-euro ($15.6 billion) asset manager.

* German investment group Arques Industries has agreed to buy an 80.2 percent stake in Siemens‘ cordless phone unit SHC, closing the chapter on Siemens’ telecoms business.

* Germany’s BMW agreed to sell 72.9 percent of its IT consultancy Cirquent to NTT Data of Japan for an undisclosed price, the luxury carmaker said.

The subprime crisis has come to this: The U.S. government is considering taking over mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if their funding problems worsen, the New York Times reported, citing people briefed on the matter. Fannie and Freddie, government-sponsored entities that have the implicit backing of Washington, would be placed into conservatorship, with shareholders left with little or nothing, and the losses on the $5 trillion in home loans they own or guarantee — what amounts to half of all U.S. mortgages — would be paid by U.S. taxpayers.

General Electric is set to sell its Japanese consumer finance operation to Shinsei Bank for 580 billion yen ($5.4 billion), people familiar with the matter said. The business includes a moneylender, Lake, as well as a credit card and housing loan operation. GE had previously said it was looking to sell Lake, but did not say anything about the entire Japanese consumer finance business.

How’s this for an about-face? Anheuser-Busch is in active talks to sell itself to InBev in a friendly deal, the New York Times said on its website, citing people briefed on the matter. Price seems to be a factor, with InBev seemingly open to raising its $65 per share offer, along with pressure from major shareholders like Warren Buffett. What will politicians like Sen. Claire McCaskill and presidential candidate Barack Obama say now that “America’s Beer” may be selling itself willingly?

Citigroup is selling its German retail business to France’s Credit Mutuel for more than $8 billion. The cash proceeds of around $4 billion will go to bolster Citi’s Tier 1 capital ratio, a key measure of a bank’s financial health, by 60 basis points to 9.4 percent.