After seeing only a smattering of hands among the students and faculty at the Schine Auditorium in response to his question about who was registered to vote in Connecticut, Welch said, “It’s hardly worth my effort, but” — shouting now — “vote for Linda McMahon!”

Welch was at the John F. Welch College of Business, the Sacred Hart school that he endowed after retiring from GE in 2001, for a give-and-take with the students in which he emphasized repeatedly the need for government to be business-friendly to get the economy back up to speed.

In a brief interview after his talk, Welch noted that McMahon was a successful business executive likely to foster policies that would help grow jobs and support the business sector. He had no good words for Richard Blumenthal, the Democratic candidate.

The New York Post reported the story Thursday, adding the Deutsche Bank had been hired to market the marketer of customer engagement and loyalty programs.

Affinion, along with its Norwalk-based peers Vertrue and WebLoyalty, all trace their roots back to CUC International, a membership services formerly company based in Stamford. CUC’s founders, Kirk Shelton and Walter Forbes, are serving prison terms for accounting fraud in CUC’s merger with HFS Corp. to form Cendant Corp. in 1997.

Affinion has been the target of enforcement actions by several states, paying fines for allegedly misleading customers into accepting memberships in programs that charged a fee to their credit cards every month. Affinion has maintained that it did nothing wrong, but agreed to alter some practices to give customers more disclosure.

The company, founded in 2005 when Apollo acquired the remaining membership loyalty assets from Cendant, employs about 400 people at 6 High Ridge Park in Stamford.

Cohen, who owns the infamous Damien Hirst sculpture with a large, dead shark floating in formaldehyde (which used to grace the foyer of SAC Capital’s Stamford offices), didn’t buy Hirst’s latest fish-in-fluid work, which boasts 400 finned species in three glass cases. It went to an Asian collector.

Stevie — and everybody else at the show, according to Bloomberg — also passed on a $6 million cabinet some 10 feet tall filled with Viagra tablets.

Now, I can see some hedge fund managers thinking that’s a pretty low co-pay for a virtually never-ending script of little blue party pills, but the art lovers at the show gave this new Hirst installation the cold shoulder. Good for them.

Fox is appealing to viewers to lobby Cablevision so we don’t “lose” our access to House and Bones and the World Series. The real issue is how Fox and Cablevision split up the money that subscribers pay. All that is certain is whatever Cablevision pays Fox will be reflected in our bills at some point.

A pox on all their houses, I say.

The solution, and both Fox and Cablevision should take note, costs $10 at Walmart. Rabbit ears work just as well on new HDTVs as the did on old B&W tubes. And TV over the air is still free.

I’m having trouble getting too worked up about his personal tragedy. Mr. Greenwood, who pleaded guilty to charges of fraud over shenanigans at WTG, dropped more than a million dollars of his ill-gotten gains buying stuffed toys. Hopefully the people he defrauded will see some return from the sale of the teddy bears, and that the Steiff’s have not gone the way of Beanie Babies on the value scale.

And as an aside, what kind of hedge fund manager collects teddy bears, anyway? Maseratis or Gulfstreams or sports teams I can understand, even Steve Cohen’s classy paintings, but teddy bears? Sheesh.

Including Jeff Immelt’s, apparently.

Public policy, corporate strategy and consumer demand are all pointing to a vast increase in electricity usage in the coming years, and there ain’t no way — save building a bunch of nuke plants in a hurry — we’re going to do it without the decidedly un-green combustion of a lot of carbon-based fuels.

So guess what. GE, while touting its “ecomagination” on cartoon commercials, goes out today and buys one of the biggest manufacturers of oil and gas exploration and distribution devices.

Dresser Inc., which has been sitting in the portfolio of Greenwich-based private equity firm First Reserve for a bunch of years now, “is a great fit for the GE business model,” said John Krenicki, vice chairman of GE and president and CEO of GE Energy, in a press release.

See below for the full text, which, by the way, doesn’t mention “oil” until the sixth paragraph.

Thus, near-term, while we wait for every rooftop to have solar panels and cornfield to have big, white turbines, GE is drilling for oil and gas. Sounds like a great hedge play to me, and as I write this, GE shares are up 39 cents to $16.90. It’s the biggest percentage gainer on the Dow. Now that’s ecomagination for you.

GE Continues Expansion of $40 Billion Energy Technology Portfolio With Acquisition of Dresser, Inc.
Addition of High Technology Compression Gas Engines, Flow Technologies and Measurement and Distribution Solutions Expands GE Offerings for Global Energy Customers

ATLANTA, GA.—October 6, 2010—GE (NYSE: GE) today announced that it has signed a contract to acquire Dresser, Inc., a global energy infrastructure technology and service provider. The $3 billion deal is the latest in a series of acquisitions over the last 10 years that has helped grow GE’s energy business and deliver record profitability.

The addition of Dresser’s portfolio, which includes technologies for gas engines, control and relief valves, measurement, regulation and control solutions for gas and fuel distribution, will expand GE’s core energy offerings and extend its reach into adjacent offerings for its energy and industrial customers around the world. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close promptly after receiving regulatory approval.

“Dresser is a great fit for the GE business model,” said John Krenicki, vice chairman of GE and president and CEO of GE Energy. “Dresser’s technology complements our existing gas engine portfolio and adds offerings complementary to those of GE in the $45 billion flow technology industry, including product offerings in the highly engineered valve segment. Eighty-five percent of Dresser’s revenue is from energy customers, and it has developed a large installed base of equipment, which is a big reason why 40 percent of its total revenue is derived from aftermarket service offerings, and there is a lot of room for future expansion.”

Krenicki added, “Dresser has a global franchise and brand with 60 percent of revenues outside of North America, which will be accelerated by GE’s global footprint. Through the acquisition, we will bring to bear our focus on research and development to Dresser’s highly engineered custom solutions and create an opportunity for Dresser’s 6,300 talented employees to dramatically expand their businesses.”

Headquartered in Addison, Texas, Dresser operates in more than 100 countries, delivering compression, flow technology, measurement and distribution infrastructure and services to customers in more than 150 countries. Dresser had revenues of $2 billion and earnings of $318 million in 2009.

“Our track record integrating previous acquisitions such as Nuovo Pignone, (Oil & Gas), Jenbacher (gas engines), Bently Nevada (conditioning and monitoring) and Enron Wind (renewable energy), gives us great confidence to build upon as we move forward with Dresser,” explained Krenicki. “Our team is committed to technology leadership, globalization and operating discipline.”

Dresser’s diverse portfolio will complement many of GE’s product offerings. Dresser’s gas engines will give GE best in class, low-emissions, fuel-flexible mechanical-drive technology that can be applied to the small-scale compression segment for customers in the Oil and Gas sector. GE Jenbacher’s expertise in clean, fuel-flexible, high-efficiency, power-generation engines, combined with Dresser’s expertise in durable, low-emissions, fuel-flexibility rich-burn mechanical drive engines, will help deliver a wide-range of enhanced gas-engine technology solutions to petrochemical, mining, manufacturing and power-generation customers worldwide.

Dresser also will further the development of GE Energy’s monitoring, diagnostics and performance optimization offerings. Dresser’s pressure relief and control valve technologies will be complemented by GE’s domain expertise, which will create opportunities to bring additional technology and applications to Dresser’s offerings. GE plans to build out solutions it offers to help customers effectively manage the pressure and relief flows in pipelines, processing plants and power generation facilities. Dresser’s capabilities combined with GE’s existing solutions will help to increase customer productivity and reduce operational costs.

Dresser President and CEO John Ryan said, “Joining the GE family will enhance our company’s capability to provide best-in-class energy technologies to a much broader segment of the energy sector. Our employees have worked hard to build a world-class reputation and we are confident that our tradition of putting the customer first will continue to be the standard. Today’s announcement marks the beginning of a great opportunity for our customers and employees as we put these two 100+-year-old companies together and create new paths for growth and innovation.”

The deal announcement continues a series of actions in GE’s energy business over the last 10 days. On September 27, GE announced a joint venture in China to grow in the world’s largest wind market. On October 1, the company announced the close of the purchase of assets of Calnetix Power Solutions, which expands GE’s capabilities to recover waste heat from industrial processes for electricity generation and will also complement GE’s gas engine business. On October 4, GE signed a $700 million contract with Saudi Electricity Company for a new, high-efficiency power plant in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Barclays Capital Inc. is the exclusive financial advisor to GE on the transaction.

For more information go to www.gereports.com/energize_ge.

About GE
GE (NYSE: GE) is a diversified infrastructure, finance and media company taking on the world’s toughest challenges. From aircraft engines and power generation to financial services, health care solutions and television programming, GE operates in more than 100 countries and employs about 300,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company’s website at www.ge.com.

GE serves the energy sector by developing and deploying technology that helps make efficient use of natural resources. With nearly 85,000 global employees and 2009 revenues of $40 billion, GE Energy www.ge.com/energy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of power generation and energy delivery technologies. The businesses that comprise GE Energy—GE Power & Water, GE Energy Services and GE Oil & Gas—work together to provide integrated product and service solutions in all areas of the energy industry including coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear energy; renewable resources such as water, wind, solar and biogas; and other alternative fuels.

About Dresser, Inc.
Dresser, Inc. is a leader in providing highly engineered infrastructure products for the global energy industry. Leading brand names within the Dresser portfolio include Dresser Wayne® retail fueling systems, Waukesha® natural gas-fired engines, Masoneilan® control valves, Consolidated® pressure relief valves, and Roots® blowers and compressors. The company has manufacturing and customer service facilities located strategically worldwide and a sales presence in more than 150 countries. www.dresser.com.

Dear Editor:
We at the Internal Revenue Service are concerned because as many as 3,900 small community-based nonprofits in Connecticut are in jeopardy of losing their tax-exempt status. The loss of this status could greatly impact the organizations’ charitable work and their donors’ potential tax deductions.

Among the organizations that could lose their tax-exempt status are local sports associations and community support groups, volunteer fire and ambulance associations and their auxiliaries, social clubs, educational societies, veterans groups, church-affiliated groups, groups designed to assist those with special needs and a variety of others.

The organizations that are at risk failed to file the required returns for 2007, 2008 and 2009, according to IRS records. The requirement to file is the result of a tax law change that occurred in 2006. For many of these small organizations, complying with the new law may be as simple as completing a 10-minute form online. They can preserve their exempt status under a one-time relief program the IRS announced in July, but only if they file by Oct. 15, 2010.

The IRS has made numerous attempts to alert these organizations, but we are concerned that many may not have gotten the word. A list of the organizations that were at-risk as of the end of July is posted at IRS.gov along with instructions on how to comply with the new law.

We encourage everyone who is connected with a small nonprofit community group to make sure that their organization is aware of the law change and is in compliance before the October 15 deadline.

Best regards,
Gregg Semanick
IRS CT Spokesperson
200 Sheffield Street, Mountainside NJ

“For more than two decades, GEAM has brought its 80-year heritage of investment expertise to the marketplace, which includes individuals who invest in the GE Funds directly and through intermediaries,“ added Mike Cosgrove, President and CEO of Mutual Funds at GEAM. “Our decision reflects our commitment to this market, while also better aligning our business model with our core strengths as an institutional asset manager and limiting our servicing responsibilities in this area.“ 

Is GEAM downsizing in Stamford?

Like so many financial firms that got burned, AIG, Lehman Brothers, Citi, et al, the local corporate chased higher returns in risker investments, and lost the bet.

It begs the larger question, though, if credit unions should be allowed in the game at all. From their founding as cooperatives that put relatively small amounts of money to work among a group with some common bond, many CUs have positioned themselves as regional retail banks. These days, they are allowed to take outside customers and grow to billions in assets.

The system has had to create organizations like Constitution Corporate to handle clearing duties and other backroom functions, including investing substantial assets for smaller credit unions. They’re playing with the big kids, and maybe that’s not the wisest thing for what was supposed to be a movement to allow access to savings accounts and home loans for everyday working people. Members of the state’s credit unions should be outraged that the group backing their local CUs should have gotten so far out of hand.