When I wrote to you last year, none of us could have imagined the scale of the challenges that 2020 would bring. I am proud of how the GE team rose to meet these challenges, while continuing to deliver for customers and propelling our transformation forward. As we begin 2021, I want to take this opportunity to share insights into how our Board worked on your behalf this past year.

PROTECTING OUR EMPLOYEES AND COMMUNITIES
During 2020, the GE team was focused first and foremost on protecting the health and safety of our employees and communities. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, GE quickly instituted strong safety precautions for its global workforce and pledged financial support to employees and their families through GE’s new Employee Relief Fund. The Board was engaged throughout the year with leadership in taking steps to keep our workplaces around the world safe, to accelerate the manufacture of life-saving respirators and to assure GE’s operations were functioning well in a digital and remote work environment.

As part of his drive to use lean principles to improve GE’s performance, our Chairman and CEO, Larry Culp, has prioritized operational safety and product quality. We are also focused on this at the Board. We use reporting from management in both of these areas as a barometer of organizational health, as well as of the safety of our people and the products that GE produces.

ACCELERATING GE’S TRANSFORMATION
GE entered 2020 with momentum and a clear plan to drive profitable growth, margin expansion and cash generation. However, we embraced new realities due to the pandemic, and GE’s leadership team took decisive action to preserve and build GE’s strength. The Board focused on how the team was mitigating the financial impact of the pandemic on the company overall and, in particular, on the Aviation and Healthcare businesses that were most directly affected by the global downturn. Meanwhile, we engaged with leadership on the turnarounds in the Power and Renewable

Energy businesses, where operational improvements are underway to expand margins and improve cash realization. As a Board, we oversaw actions to:

Strengthen our businesses: reduced costs by more than $2 billion, executed on $3 billion of cash preservation actions and delivered positive free cash flow at Gas Power one year ahead of target.

Fortify the balance sheet: took action to reduce GE’s debt by $16 billion in 2020 and by $30 billion since the beginning of 2019, and reduced near-term liquidity needs by $10.5 billion.

Focus the portfolio: completed the sales of the BioPharma and Lighting businesses and launched a program to fully monetize GE’s remaining stake in Baker Hughes Company.

The Board also worked with Larry over the past year on key leadership hires and did deep dives into succession planning. What GE does is critically important to the world, and a key part of our responsibility on the Board is making sure that GE has the right people in the right jobs today and a pipeline of talent for tomorrow. We have reviewed elements of GE’s long-term strategy at every meeting, and those discussions invariably revolved around ensuring financial resilience and properly investing in people, business processes and technology for the future.

BOARD OVERSIGHT AND ENGAGEMENT
During the early months of the pandemic, our oversight at the Board was focused on health and safety, business continuity, risk management and governance for weathering an exceptionally challenging and uncertain environment. We also moved swiftly to take a series of treasury actions to shore up the balance sheet and preserve liquidity, as well as operational cost and cash actions across GE’s businesses to manage risk and mitigate adverse financial impacts from the volatile supply and demand dynamics in our industries. During the summer, after implementing those earliest stabilizing actions, the Board’s attention also shifted to the leadership team and providing appropriate incentive arrangements for the

CEO and other key employees, as described in greater detail in the letter from the Management Development & Compensation Committee.

As a Board, we switched from in-person to virtual meetings, just as many of our employees did the same. Directors continued their ongoing discussions with leadership throughout the year, albeit usually by video. Larry has encouraged directors to feel free to speak to any member of leadership at any time, to dive deeper into topic areas where we have specific expertise or concern and to hear directly from GE’s people. Larry regularly updates the full Board informally, and many of us talk with him individually on a wide range of topics as issues arise. We held more than 35 formal meetings across the full Board and committees in 2020, in addition to numerous other engagements with the team throughout the year, including participation in GE employee leadership meetings. The atmosphere among Board members and with Larry and the GE team is exceptionally open, engaged and constructive.

We have made meaningful progress over the past year, despite the additional unexpected challenges of a global pandemic. We also know that we have more work to do to drive the desired performance improvements and organizational change. On behalf of the entire Board, I thank you for your continued investment and support of GE as we work together to continue our transformation. We are committed to ensuring that GE is very well positioned to deliver value over the long term.