GE Capital plans to pay $6.5 billion in dividends to GE

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General Electric Co ( id="symbol_GE.N_0">GE.N) said its financial unit GE Capital Corp would pay $6.5 billion in dividends to the parent in 2013 as part of a plan to reduce the unit's size.

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"This announcement is consistent with our goal to reduce the overall size of GE Capital and for it to return significant cash to GE," GE CEO Jeff Immelt said in a statement on Monday.

 

The dividend payment includes a special dividend of $4.5 billion, the company said.

The dividend payments are planned at 30 percent of GE Capital's total 2013 earnings, GE said. GE Capital paid a first-quarter earnings dividend of $447 million on April 19.

GE Capital, which won regulatory approval to resume returning some of its profit to GE last May, had paid $6.4 billion to the parent company in 2012.

General Electric's shares were almost flat at $23.45 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Mridhula Raghavan and Bijoy Koyitty in Bangalore)