Two months after having announced that itr would explore hiving-off its century old appliances busines, General Electric Co yesterday said that it would divest to shareholders its entire GE Consumer & Industrial group, which includes not only its appliances but its lighting business, the forerunner to which  was co founded Thomas Edison.

Under immense shareholder pressure over lower than expected results in April, GE chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt had announced on 16 May that a spin-off was one possible outcome of the strategic review of its appliances division.

Immelt said in Apriil that said GE may earn $2.20 to $2.30 a share, below the minimum of $2.42 he had earlier predicted and on the same day, GE reported a surprise decline in first-quarter profit, and shares fell the most since 1987.

Shareholders now want him to speed up divestitures and focus on businesses with better growth potential such as jet engines, energy and health care, to revive stock prices that  have lost a quarter of their value this year.

According to analysts estimates, a sale could fetch $3 billion to $8 billion.

Reports induicate that potential bidders for the appliance unit include Turkey's largest maker of household appliances Arcelik AS, Hong Kong-based Haier Electronics Group Co. and South Korea's LG Electronics Inc.

''As we explored our options for appliances, it became clear that the fastest, most efficient step we could take in completing the transformation of our Industrial portfolio would be to focus on a possible spin-off of the entire unit,'' Immelt said in a statement. ''This is consistent with the strategy we have been executing to transform the GE portfolio for long-term growth and makes sense for GE shareholders.''

''While we will continue to consider all opportunities for consumer and industrial, focusing on a spin-off makes sense for these great businesses as well. They have integrated processes, distribution and backroom operations,'' Immelt said. ''Consumer and industrial would benefit by keeping a world-class leadership team intact, its employees together and would have the ability to control their own destiny. I am pleased that Jim Campbell and his team remain committed to this effort."

The latest decision coud see some of the best-known divisions being divested from the GE fold. The jet-engines-to-healthcare and finance-to-energy conglomerate may consider a sale or other options for the group, which  contributed to around 7.4 per cent of the company's total sales in 2007 and 15 per cent of the workforce.

To keep up its profitability, ising GE has cut costs, product lines and jobs from all three divisions in the GE Consumer & Industrial segment for years. Last year the lighting operations said it would eliminate a further 1,400 positions as it shut incandescent plants in favour of manufacturing more energy efficient, compact fluorescent bulbs overseas.

In a bid to keep raising earning by 10 per cent every year, Immelt has divested more than $50 billion in proceeds from selling GE units economically vulnerable sector, including insurance and its plastics business, and investing $80 billion to acquire faster-growing businesses such as wind turbines and aviation. Last yerar it sold ther plastics unit to Saudi Arabia Investment Corporation for $11.6 billion. Incidentally Immelt and his legendary predecessor Jack Welch had spent their early years at GE in the plastics division.