General Electric is to spin off its consumer and industrial group as it accelerates its drive to boost profits by offloading less profitable units.

The conglomerate, which said in May that it would spin off its $7.2 billion (£3.6 billion) appliances unit, has since decided to hive-off its entire consumer and industrial group, which includes appliances and the GE Lighting division, which invented the incandescent light bulb in 1879.

Annual sales of the division are $17 billion. GE Consumer & Industrial is part of a larger group, GE Industrial. The five other main units are NBC Universal, GE Infrastructure, GE Money, GE Commercial Finance and GE Healthcare.

GE has been under pressure to reduce its diverse offering, which spans credit cards to jet engines to television broadcasting, after reporting an unexpectedly disappointing 5.8 per cent profits decline in the first quarter. Profits were down in four of GE's six units, with the financial services division suffering particularly badly, in the wake of the credit crunch.

Jeff Immelt, chief executive of GE, who also lowered his 2008 profit target when he announced the first-quarter results in April, said yesterday: “It became clear that the fastest, most efficient step we could take in completing the transformation would be to focus on a possible spin-off of the entire unit.”

James Campbell, chief executive of GE Consumer and Industrial, added: “We've hit a rough patch in terms of the US economy, but we'll come through it even stronger than before.”

GE also said it was considering a sale of GE Consumer & Industrial, the division that employs 50,000 staff and last year made roughly $1 billion in profits on sales of $13.3 billion.

However, analysts believe that a spin-off is more likely since deal finan-cing is hard to obtain. A spin-off would create a separate, publicly traded company, owned by GE shareholders.

Mr Immelt has sold about $50 billion worth of GE's businesses. Last year, the underperforming plastics business went for $11.6 billion and its $30 billion credit card division is soon to be auctioned.

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