IMGCAP(1)]
While General Electric Co.'s $30 billion GE Money retail credit card portfolio languishes on the selling block, the company continues to offer new credit card products. This week, GE Money introduced a cobranded Chevron and Texaco Visa credit card that carries no annual fee and offers 3% in fuel credits for fuel purchases at Chevron and Texaco stations and 1% in fuel credits for purchases made elsewhere. New Visa card customers who sign up in August and September will receive a discount of 30 cents per gallon on fuel purchases for the first 60 days. The new card complements GE Money's existing private-label Chevron and Texaco credit cards, which GE acquired in August 2007 from Chevron U.S.A. Inc. and Chevron Credit Bank N.A. Timothy Kolk, managing partner of Peterborough, N.H.-based Brookwood Capital, a card-portfolio consulting firm, tells CardLine GE has no choice but to continue with the business plan it outlined when it purchased Chevron's card assets, although the timing is awkward. "GE probably hoped to sell its entire portfolio by this time, but it hasn't found a buyer because card-portfolio demand has slowed down considerably in the last six months. I don't think it has hit bottom yet," Kolk says. Late last year, GE Money announced it was seeking a buyer for its card portfolio, which encompasses about 40 million card accounts associated with two dozen retailers. Parent GE is looking to spin off several of its subsidiaries to raise shareholder value, analysts say.
