With GE Move, a Bounty of Assets Up for Grabs

The move to shrink GE Capital, the seventh-largest U.S. bank-holding company, represents one of the biggest attempted sales of financial assets and comes after years of sluggish deal making among lenders as they grapple with the aftereffects of the financial crisis.

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Should nontraditional lenders pick up some of the assets, it could further boost the so-called shadow-banking sector that has grown in the wake of the financial crisis and test regulators' tolerance for such firms.

On Friday, GE was fielding dozens of inquiries from banks, private-equity firms and others expressing interest in the assets, people familiar with the discussions said. GE Capital Chief Executive Keith Sherin said on a conference call that the company is already in talks for "several" of the assets.

The largest individual piece in the package is GE Capital's U.S. commercial-lending and leasing business, which has $74 billion of assets. Should GE fail to find a buyer for the entire collection, that business could be sold either to a large U.S. institution such as Citigroup Inc. or PNC Financial Services Group Inc., or to a large foreign bank that has a limited U.S. presence, a person familiar with the discussions said.

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Meanwhile, nonbank investment firms may seek to purchase assets such as groups of loans or investments, rather than whole businesses. Buyers that have been in contact with GE already about such deals include Apollo Global Management LLC, Blackstone Group LP's GSO Capital Partners and BlackRock Inc., one of the people said.