The world this week -- BusinessAfter years of complaints from investors that its sprawling empire of businesses was hindering profits, General Electric decided to split into three, independently run companies.Its health-care assets will be spun off in 2023; energy and power will be rolled into one and spun off in 2024; and aviation is to remain the sole focus of today’s GE.The conglomerate has been shedding businesses for over a decade.The decision to split heralds the end of arguably the world’s best-known conglomerate, a titan of American business throughout the 20th century.Rivian, a maker of electric vehicles backed by Amazon, had a successful stockmarket debut on the Nasdaq.Its stock rose by 30% above the offer price, giving it a market capitalisation of over $100bn, more than either Ford or General Motors.The company raised around $12bn, making it the biggest IPO in America since Alibaba’s listing in 2014.At the opposite end of the motoring business, Hertz’s share price fell by 10% on its first day on the stockmarket since the company emerged from bankruptcy.The European Union’s General Court, the lower tribunal of the Court of Justice, dismissed Google’s appeal against the 2.4bn euro ($2.8bn) fine that the European Commission imposed on the company in 2017 for anti-competitive practices that favoured its own comparison-shopping service.
