General Electric, the American multinational conglomerate, is to sell off GE Capital’s fleet management operations in the US, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand for $6.98bn (£4.44bn) in cash.

One of America’s largest companies, GE will sell several of its fleet businesses to a Canadian rival, as part of the firm’s strategy of focuses on its more profitable units.

The fleet businesses provide commercial vehicle financing and fleet managements systems, which will be bought by Element Financial, which is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

GE has showed more signs of slimming down as it has signed a memorandum of understanding for the potential sale of its European fleet to Arval, a subsidiary of French bank BNP Paribas and Element’s founding partner.

Arval, a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, and Element will manage customer fleets around the world (Souce: Getty)

The completion of the transaction with Arval is expected in the fourth quarter of this year, BNP Paribas said.

The Element-Arval Global Alliance, on completing the deals, will be able to manage customer fleets in more than 40 countries, Element said in a statement.

This comes two years after GE had sold its Canadian fleet business to Element in 2013, and in the backdrop of the US conglomerate making steady progress with the sale of $200bn (£127bn) of financial assets.

Read More: General Electric shares leap on plans to shrink finance arm

GE is looking to sell most of its capital assets over the next 18 months as part of a plan to grow its industrial businesses as the principal source of earnings.

The company wants to reduce the size its financial services business in order to avoid regulatory hurdles and oversight.