GE completed the sale of its equipment finance and receivable finance businesses in France and Germany to Banque Fédérative du Crédit Mutuel (BFCM), representing an ending net investment (ENI) of approximately $6.8 billion as of Q1/16.

“We’re pleased to complete this transaction with BFCM for a significant piece of our European business,” said Keith Sherin, GE Capital chairman and CEO. “As we continue to execute on our strategy to significantly reduce the size of GE Capital, we wish our commercial finance employees in France and Germany the very best as they join BFCM,” he added.

BFCM is part of CM11 which belongs to Crédit Mutuel group, the second largest retail bank in France with a strong competitive positioning in home loans, SME and non-life insurance.

As previously announced, GE is focusing on its high-value industrial businesses and is selling most of GE Capital’s assets. GE will retain the financing “verticals” that relate to GE’s industrial businesses.

Since the announcement, GE Capital has signed agreements for the sale of approximately $183 billion of businesses and has closed approximately $168 billion of those transactions. GE Capital plans to have largely completed the process of selling approximately $200 billion of GE Capital businesses not linked to GE by the end of 2016.

The transaction contributed approximately $1.3 billion of capital to the overall target of approximately $35 billion of dividends expected to be paid to GE under this plan.

With more than 4,063 branches CM11 Group is one of the leading French retail banks. BFCM, the group’s holding company, owns and controls the French and foreign operational subsidiaries (insurance, banking, IT, etc.) including CIC, Targobank (in Germany and Spain), CIC Iberbanco (in France) and Cofidis (in France, Belgium, Spain and Portugal). It also manages the funding and liquidity of the group and serves as a vehicle for external growth transactions.