SCHENECTADY — General Electric Co. Friday said it will restructure from six businesses down to four, a move that CEO Jeff Immelt said will focus the company on growth.

“We have been upgrading our portfolio of businesses and simplifying our organizations for market focus, efficiency and execution,” Immelt said in a statement. “We have higher-growth, higher-margin businesses and organizationally have simplified the company from 11 business segments in 2001 to four segments today.”

Prior to Friday’s announcement, GE’s six businesses were Infrastructure, Commercial Finance, GE Money, GE Healthcare, NBC Universal and GE Industrial Products.

The realignment breaks up the infrastructure segment, GE’s biggest money maker, with $3.2 billion in second-quarter profits, into two businesses: GE Technology Infrastructure, led by Vice Chairman John Rice, and GE Energy Infrastructure, headed up by John Krenicki, who was also promoted to vice chairman.

GE Technology Infrastructure will include GE’s Healthcare, Aviation, Transportation and Enterprise Solutions divisions. GE Energy Infrastructure will include what had been GE’s Energy division combined with its Oil & Gas and Water divisions, all under Krenicki’s leadership.

Immelt said GE will combine all of its financial service businesses, including Commercial Finance, GE Money and Corporate Treasury, into one segment called GE Capital led by Vice Chairman Mike Neal. NBC Universal, headed by Jeff Zucker, will remain unchanged.

Immelt has been under pressure to shake up GE since it shocked investors with disappointing first-quarter earnings. GE’s share price has since dropped nearly 22 percent.

Friday’s move follows GE’s recent plan to consider spinning off its iconic lighting and appliance businesses, a brand familiar to Americans for generations.

“With the announcement of our focus on a possible Consumer & Industrial spin-off, we can structure the company in a simpler way that can maximize future growth,” Immelt said.

According to GE officials, GE Energy Infrastructure will be headquartered in Atlanta, longtime home for GE Energy, but much of its leadership will be located in Schenectady.

GE’s Erie Boulevard campus is the headquarters for GE Power Generation, a division of GE Energy Infrastructure, which includes the leadership for the conglomerate’s renewable energy businesses focused on wind and solar energy.

GE Energy Infrastructure spokesman Dan Nelson said the communications department for GE Energy Infrastructure is also based in Schenectady. He said Krenicki spends most of his time there.

“He spends a lot of his time in Schenectady. I would say he spends the majority of his time here but he travels around the world,” Nelson said.

Krenicki was named president and CEO of GE Energy in 2005 after serving as president and CEO of GE Plastics and GE Advanced Materials. Although he owns homes in both Atlanta and Fairfield, Conn., he and his family primarily live in the Northeast, Nelson said.

In what some have characterized as a signal of GE’s renewed commitment to Schenectady, GE Energy Infrastructure this year moved its annual steam turbine customer conference from Atlanta to Albany.

Immelt praised Krenicki, 46, a 24-year GE veteran.

“John is a world-class infrastructure expert, business strategist and commercial leader who has done a terrific job leading our Plastics, Transportation and Energy businesses,” Immelt said. “His clear thinking and broad global leadership experience will help drive growth across our energy and water infrastructure businesses.”

Analyst Nicholas Heymann of Sterne Agee in New York said in an e-mail that the new structure suggests GE will focus increasingly on infrastructure and, to a lesser extent, commercial finance.

The expected sale of GE Money at a favorable price “should further underscore GE’s narrowing focus of its businesses,” Heymann said. Immelt has said GE will consider selling portions of GE Money, which provides banking and credit services.

GE, which is based in Fairfield, has been getting rid of other units that have failed to drive profitability. It announced in May it would sell or spin off its appliance business but this month said it would spin off the entire unit that includes household appliances such as dishwashers and clothes dryers and lighting, motors and electrical distribution.

Todd Alhart, a spokesman for GE Global Research headquartered in Niskayuna, said GE’s research and development arm will not be affected by any of the company restructuring.

“We will continue to support our businesses the same way we have been supporting them. We are a part of GE corporate. We support R&D for all of GE’s businesses,” Alhart said.

Analyst Matt Collins of Edward Jones in St. Louis said investors will benefit from the reorganization if it helps GE officials focus on key markets and provides more transparency.

In particular, he said organizing GE’s array of financial services into one unit makes it a “little easier to figure out where the financial earnings are coming from,” he said. “That’s overdue.”