Read the attached article regarding General Electric Corporation's sale of its appliance line that appeared in the Wall Street Journal the week of September 8, 2014

Required: Assume that you are working in the accounting department at General Electric and your supervisor, Lamar Jackson, has asked you to research the relevant accounting literature related to Discontinued Operations of a business enterprise. Mr. Jackson is unsure as to whether this transaction should be accounted for as discontinued or as a normal business disposal accounted for as part of continuing operations. Write Mr. Jackson a memo of no more than one page, in proper business form, and summarize your research findings as to how you believe the transaction should be accounted for under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Justify your position with appropriate reference citations.

By TED MANN

Updated Sept. 8, 2014 7:37 p.m. ET

General Electric Co., which commercialized the electric toaster and self-cleaning oven, said it would sell its appliance business to Sweden-based Electrolux AB for $3.3 billion.

The sale will leave the U.S. conglomerate almost entirely focused on finance and big ticket industrial equipment like power turbines and aircraft engines.

The shift is the work of Chief Executive Jeff Immelt, who in his 14th year as CEO is adjusting to competitive pressures and trying to boost a long-sluggish stock price by focusing on the question: What is GE?

The answer isn't insurance, plastics, media, consumer finance or appliances-businesses Mr. Immelt has been shedding. Increasingly, the company founded by Thomas Edison is again an energy company.

Mr. Immelt has spent around $14 billion buying oil-and-gas service companies over the past several years. Energy and related activities last year accounted for about one-third of the company's revenue and more than 40% of operating profit.

The company also remains a big bank, with GE Capital accounting for about one-third of its revenue and around half its profit. It is also a leading maker of aircraft engines and medical devices like CT scanners.

While Electrolux will continue to use the GE name, Mr. Immelt is cutting one of the company's few remaining ties to the American middle-class consumer- the division that stocked homes with GE dishwashers, radios and toasters.

"GE is a high-tech infrastructure company, that's who we are toda y," Mr . Immelt said in a recent interview, referring to the continuing discussion about the fate of the appliance unit. "We're not really a consumer-products company."

So far, the stock market hasn't cooperated. GE's share price fell below $6 during the financial crisis and hasn't returned to $30 since. The company's shares are off 7% so far this year, and were down slightly on news of the appliance deal, falling two cents to $26.08 on the New York Stock Exchange, while Electrolux climbed 5% to $55,44 in over the-counter trading in the U.S.

Board members and executives including Mr. Immelt say the stock doesn't account for the value of the businesses the company has assembled.

They expect investor interest to revive as some of the portfolio-shifting moves Mr. Immelt has championed are completed next year, including the split-off of Synchrony Financial, GE's recently renamed consumer credit business that provides store-branded credit cards and financing plans.

The moves are finding some converts on Wall Street. GE had been a lightning rod for investor criticism, Steven Winoker, an analyst at Bernstein Research, wrote last month.

But Mr. Winoker said the company was poised to do better than its peers, saying GE's portfolio was as centered on industrial business as it had been in a quarter century, the midpoint of Jack Welch's tenure as CEO.

The sale of the appliances business-expected to close next year-would pull GE out of an industry in which it was once a dominant presence and a household name, beginning with the introduction of the model D-12, its first electric toaster, in 1905.

Electrolux is paying an annual royalty for the right to use the GE Appliances brand for some 40 years.

For decades, GE's home appliances formed a link between American consumers and one of the country's oldest and largest industrial companies. GE stoves, clock radios and microwaves featured in the company's TV ad campaigns promised to "Bring good things to life." The business also helped spur GE's move into lending. During the Depression, the company created GE Credit Corp. to help finance the sale of its appliances.

But the appliance business has long been out of step with Mr. Immelt's plans for the company, which focus on complex machinery and the long-term service contracts that go with it.

GE's appliance business is profitable, but it brought in just $5.7 billion in annual revenue last year-a small part of GE's $146 billion total and dwarfed by the company's energy, aviation and finance operations. The $381 million profit from the conglomerate's appliances and lighting division, of which the appliance business represents the lion's share, represented less than 3% of GE's net earnings in 2013.

GE has faced continual pressure to invest in new products and compete with other manufacturers in the appliance business, which lacks the long tail of service and maintenance revenue that investors prize in the power and aviation businesses. The company poured $1 billion into renewing its product lines after failing to sell the appliance and lighting business in 2008, butitsproducts haven't impressed analysts in recent years.

"They were playing a defensive game," said David MacGregor, an analyst with Longbow Securities. By contrast, Mr. MacGregor said, Electrolux could use its GE acquisition to compete with industry leader Whirlpool Corp. in the U.S. and Brazil, especially for customers who aren't willing to shell out for Electrolux's premium name brand.

GE has about 12 ,0 0 0 workers in its appliance business, including 6,000 atAppliance Park, its historic manufacturing campus in Louisville, Ky.

The disposition of the appliance business is the latest in series of efforts by Mr. Immelt and GE management to cleave off underperforming industrial units and shrink the company's overall dependence on its massive finance arm.

This year, GE sold shares in its North American consumer credit business in advance of the 2015 split-off. Meanwhile, the company has plowed money into new industrial businesses, including its $17 billion deal to buy the energy operations of French conglomerate Alstom SA this summer.

The efforts have served a pair of critical purposes for Mr. Immelt and GE executives . The company is seeking to reduce its exposure to financial services in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and expand the share of earnings from industrial operations.

If completed, the sale of the appliance unit would leave GE with seven industrial business lines in addition to its GE Capital arm, including two that are expected to undergo restructuring or partial divestment in the future: the energy-management business and the lighting business.

Several people who follow the company said in recent weeks that they expect GE to shed the Cleveland-based lighting unit in the near future. But others said that the business, while small compared with other parts of the company, still has value.

It also isn't a purely consumer business , one of those people said, noting that some 70% of its sales are to "professional" customers-likecontractors and building companies-as opposed to consumers pulling light bulbs off the shelf.

Mr. Im melt, in the interview, said that "interesting opportunities" could lie ahead for the lighting business.

GE's largest industrial unit, according to its most recent annual filings, continues to be its power and water business, with $24.7 billion in sales and earnings of just under $5 billion in 2013. GE Aviation, maker of jet engines for commercial and defense aircraft, earned $4.3 billion on sales of $21.9 billion last year, and its health-care unit reported earnings of $3 .0 billion on $18.2 billion in 2013 revenue.

GE's oil-and-gas business earned $2.2 billion on $17.0 billion in sales, and its transportation business, which makes freight locomotives, earned $1.2 billion on $5.9 billion in sales.

GE now aims to reap 75% of its earnings from industrial businesses by 2016. In recent years, the company has relied on its finance arm, GE Capital, for roughly half its profit.