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"People who are out there plugging away every day bringing us core growth can be as much a hero as the person that goes out and makes the big acquisition." - Dennis Dammerman

Capital Times: What would you like to accomplish in this new role? Dammerman: I have been a strong supporter of GE Capital for a lot of years and I’ll continue to be. We have the best business model in financial services. It doesn’t make sense to just throw that away because Dammerman or anybody else walks in the door. But that does not mean that we can’t be better. For instance, I really believe that we can use the Centers of Excellence to get at some real cost issues while still keeping all of the entrepreneurial spirit and industry and market intimacy that can come through the bubble concept. I love the fact that we have people who get up every morning, and all they think about is leasing modular equipment or commercial aircraft or financing real estate. I think that is a critical part of our success story, and I don’t think we should do anything to try to take us away from that intense knowledge of the market. I think we are going to have to be like everybody else in the business world these days. We are going to have a lot of priorities, and unfortunately they're all going to be number one priorities. I run around making speeches about our 10 number one priorities...not our top 10 priorities. Acquisitions continue to be important and that is a number one priority, but cost is a number one priority, and productivity is a number one priority, and core growth is a number one priority. Half of our earnings growth as we go forward over the next three years comes from acquisitions, and half from core growth. People who are out there plugging away every day bringing us core growth can be as much a hero as the person that goes out and makes the big acquisition. We haven’t made very many heroes out of the people who on a day-to-day basis star in “core growth.” We need to do that. Also, we have to understand how we can keep the sheer number of bubbles from being a roadblock to our growth. There is just an incredibly fast moving marketplace. We have to be thinking about things that will change our marketplace dramatically, like the Internet. If you go back five years and pretend you were a college text book distributor thinking about the future, I bet you would not have said “You know, five years from now we are going to be out of business.” But that’s what happened. We have to put ourselves in the position of the college textbook distributor and think about what the Internet can do to our business. We have to take what can be perceived as a threat and turn it into an opportunity. Capital Times: Will continuing to be a GE Vice Chairman require a lot of your time? Dammerman: Jack Welch is very supportive and understands how my role at Capital will impact my involvement as GE Vice Chairman. I will be here, and I want people to know that. If you look at my calendar for the first half of the year, 96 of the roughly 130 business days currently are assigned to GE Capital. Capital Times: What do you want people to know that Dennis Dammerman stands for? What accomplishment are you most proud of? Dammerman: If I look back at my career as CFO, the best recognition I ever received was being recognized for building a world class finance team. One of the most important roles that I have had in the business world is watching people early in their careers, having confidence in their abilities,