GE profit down 44 percent after brutal year

BOSTON (Reuters) - General Electric Co reported a 44 percent drop in quarterly profit, as the U.S. conglomerate and economic bellwether closed out one of the toughest years in its 117-year history.

The world's largest maker of jet engines and electric turbines said on Friday profit came to $3.72 billion, or 35 cents per diluted share, compared with $6.7 billion, or 66 cents per diluted share, a year earlier.

Revenue fell 4.8 percent.

GE, whose operations also include the NBC television network and a commercial lending business, has been hard hit by the global financial crisis, which has pounded down results at its hefty GE Capital finance arm and led many on Wall Street to wonder if it could lose its coveted triple-A debt rating.

Its shares have tumbled about 60 percent over the past year, erasing some $200 billion in market capital, and sharply outpacing the roughly 32 percent fall of the Dow Jones industrial average.

(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Derek Caney)