Time to sell your GE Stock, they are in bed with Abu Dhabi for $8 BILLION dollar Shariah Fund

GE fell 31 cents to $27.69 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading yesterday and has dropped 32 percent in the past year. The company last year got more than half its sales from outside the U.S. for the first time, part of Immelt’s strategy to tap faster-growing regions and industries.

Under the partnership announced today, GE will also invest $50 million in Masdar’s Clean Tech fund, while Mubadala will invest $200 million in GE Industrial Investment Partners, a new program to provide development money to health-care, energy and transportation industries.

Abu Dhabi, which holds about 8 percent of the world’s oil reserves, is investing in other industries as it seeks to diversify its economy. It’s targeting aerospace, energy, water and health care as key industries. Mubadala’s investments have included Carlyle Group and Ferrari.

The Middle East region is one of GE’s fastest-growing, providing more than $5 billion of its $172.9 billion in sales last year. That’s a 50 percent rise from 2006, driven by water treatment, power generation, oil and gas exploration equipment and jet engines through the GE Infrastructure segment.

The clean energy center, with 100 scientists, will be an extension of GE’s four other global research centers and focus on Masdar, which Mubadala aims to be a carbon neutral, zero-waste city in Abu Dhabi. The companies also plan run an executive training center at Masdar.

“Our long-term partnership with GE draws on a joint commitment to, and core expertise in, high-growth businesses like clean energy, project finance and aviation,” the chief executive of Mubadala and the managing director, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, said in the statement.

Mubadala will benefit from GE’s loan origination resources, which rely on the GE’s AAA credit rating to borrow at low costs, creating more profit potential. Immelt told investors July 11 that GE remains committed to its AAA rating from Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s Corp., the highest available, and that the company doesn’t need an outside capital infusion to maintain the rating at its finance units.

Immelt is selling slower-growing units tied to consumers in developed economies. Earlier this month, Immelt agreed to sell GE’s consumer-lending operations in Japan for about $5.4 billion, one day after saying he will pursue the spinoff of GE’s consumer lighting and electrical switches business in addition to the century-old appliances unit.

Under Immelt, GE has also expanded the number of joint ventures. The company last week said it would extend its jet- engine venture and maker of the world’s best-selling engine with Safran SA of France, CFM International, until 2040.

The agreement allows for expansion of General Electric’s venture with Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies for jet-engine service, and of its power-plant turbine service venture to include field-service repair for the oil and gas industry.