General Electric Capital Corporation and Wells Fargo Capital Finance also provided financing for the deal.

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About 50% of the U.S. jet fleet is leased from such companies as General Electric Capital Aviation Services (nyse: GE - news - people ), International Lease Finance Corp. (a unit of AIG) and CIT Group (nyse: CIT - news - people ).

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In contrast, its competitor General Electric reallocated capital from commodity plays that had paid in the 1970s to new real enterprises like magnetic resonance machine-manufacturing, betting that discretionary income for health care was going to soar with the coming rise in affluence.

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