The reporter appears to not have kept up with the subject of his story. He talks about contending with the flagging oil services business, but they are in the process of spinning that off in a deal which has them paying 10s of millions each to senior Baker Hughes officials to get the deal done.
GE will end up owning about 2/3 of the company at the expense of Baker Hughes current shareholders (thus the payoffs to the BH execs), but they can dump that for cash easily enough, shedding a bunch of liability in the process.
Focus 17