NPR. This is the indicator from Planet Money, I'm Waylon Wong.

And I'm Patty Hirsch.

We got some momentous news last week about one of America's most storied and iconic companies.

And also General Electric are watching that, the Industrial Giant completing the spinoff of its clean energy business as GE Vernova tomorrow.

An Industrial Giant brought to its knees.

General Electric, which had been staggering along for years as a conglomerate,

has now divided into three separate companies,

GE Healthcare, which broke away in January of last year,

GE Aerospace, and now GE Vernova and Energy Business.

This kind of breakup, where a company divides and then divides again,

like a kind of, I don't know, corporate amoeba, has several Wall Street

names.

There's the spin-out, which makes it sound to me like everyone's gone a little nuts, the

Hive-Off, which I really don't get at all, and my personal favorite, the Starburst.

But that's really only because I have a terrible sweet tooth.

The term that's most commonly used for what GE just went through though is a spin-off.

It's not something you hear that much about in the financial news, but

spin-offs actually happen all the time.

Yeah, and on today's show we'll explain exactly what a spin-off is, why companies do them even though they have a mixed record of success,

and why companies tend to prefer to do their spinning in the dark, like spiders. That's all coming up after the break.

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