General Electric Co.’s top-ranking African American executive, Vice Chairman Lloyd G. Trotter, 62, is ending his nearly 40-year tenure with the company to become a general partner with New York-based private equity firm GenNx360 Capital Partners. Trotter was named one of be’s Top 75 Corporate Executives in February 2005.
Trotter, whose achievements at GE include the development of a management performance evaluation tool known as the Trotter Matrix, will now turn his attention to growing underperforming companies that GenNx360 invests in.“This is just a natural extension of the sensational career that [Trotter] has had,” says Carl Brooks, president
and CEO of The Executive Leadership Council, an Alexandria, Virginia-based organization for black corporate executives. “Being the highest-ranking African American at one of the most admired companies in the world is the dream of every corporate executive. For him to now take that experience and leverage that into entrepreneurship, he’s going to be able to hit the ground running.”GenNx360, which closed its first fund with more than $500 million committed in January, will invest in business-to-business companies with between $250 million and $1 billion in revenues. According to Arthur Harper, another former GE executive and a managing partner of the firm, GenNx360 will help the companies it invests in revamp, become more productive, and expand. Though Trotter is saying goodbye to GE, the company will continue to do business with him as an investor in GenNx360, says spokesman Russell Wilkerson, though the amount of the investment was not disclosed.