(Reuters) - General Electric Co (GE.N) is considering deals that would cost the company more than $1 billion as it expects to end the year with a hefty cash pile, a top executive said on Tuesday.
GE expects to end 2010 with more than $25 billion in cash, from working capital management, the sale of its security businesses and the sale of 51 percent of its NBC Universal media business to Comcast Corp. (CMCSA.O)
GE executives have said their first priorities for that cash pile are to buy back the preferred stake in the company sold to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) and boosting its dividend, but the company would also like to use the cash for transactions, GE Vice Chairman John Rice said.
"We're looking carefully at smart, responsible ways to use" the cash, Rice said at the Reuters Manufacturing and Transportation Summit in Chicago.
He said that GE had managed to do several sub-$1 billion deals over the past year, in spite of the challenging economy.
"What we're looking at now is a little bit more substantial -- $1 billion-plus ... the ones that could be a little more meaningful and be complementary to what we do," said Rice, who runs GE Technology Infrastructure business.
Rice said his unit evaluates a list of possible acquisition targets on a monthly basis to find possible places to invest GE's cash.
Still, he said that bargains are rare, in spite of the recent downturn, as investors generally expect profits to recover in the near-term.
"Good companies with responsible boards weathered the storm and their stocks may be 30 to 40 percent below the highs of 2008. But there's an expectation that the business strategies are right and they're going to get back there. I don't see a lot of fire sales," Rice said.
(Reporting by Michael Erman, editing by Matthew Lewis)
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