General Electric Co's Australian consumer finance unit may make more acquisitions as it targets 15 per cent growth in its A$12 billion (US$8.4 billion) worth of assets this year, Tom Gentile, chief executive of the unit said.

GE Consumer Finance's local unit looked at more than 50 potential deals in Australia last year and sees opportunities for growth in retailing and health care, Gentile said. General Electric bought Westpac Banking Corp's AGC finance unit for A$1.65 billion (US$1.16 billion) in 2002, making it the biggest lender in Australia's non-bank consumer finance market.

"We have grown in the past by acquisitions," Gentile said. "It is something that we will continue to look at, and if the right opportunity arises we will give it some serious consideration. We always have a pipeline of potential deals."

Gentile may also take on new partners to bolster the unit's 550,000 credit cards in Australia, where total credit card and charge card purchases and cash advances for the country's 10.7 million cardholders were worth A$137 billion (US$95.94 billion) in the year ended June 2003 double the amount three years ago.

Consumer finance helped boost the Connecticut-based General Electric's first-quarter profit by 8 per cent to US$3.2 billion.

"The market has been very good, particularly in mortgages and credit cards, so this year we are looking at about a 15 per cent growth rate in Australia in terms of assets," Gentile said.

Melbourne-based Coles Myer Ltd is General Electric's largest consumer finance customer outside the US and Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd, Australia's biggest furniture and electronics retailer, is the local unit's biggest customer in sales finance, Gentile said.

"We are not necessarily looking for lots more new clients," he said. "What we would like to do is to develop stronger and deeper relationships with those clients that we have."

The unit will look for opportunities in the retail market for do-it-yourself products, as well as providing finance for people's medical bills, he said.

"There are a lot of procedures that people do eye surgery, laser surgery, for example we think might be opportunities for sales finance, where people would look to finance it because they are fairly large expenditures," he said.

(China Daily 06/28/2004 page11)