General Electric is to shrink GE Capital, its finance arm, in a move that could lead to $2bn in cost cuts, the sale of $90bn in highly leveraged assets and thousands of redundancies among its 75,000 employees.

Under plans announced on Tuesday, GE Capital will create a separate US banking unit charged with gathering retail deposits mainly via the internet. GE has more than doubled its deposits from $20bn to $43bn this year in an effort to reduce its funding costs and lessen its reliance on short-term debt.