Pipeline.(General Electric Co., General Motors Corp. involvement in mortgage business)

Board Game

The mortgage business has become so important to both General Electric Co. and General Motors Corp. that it is now considered a conflict of interest to be a director of both companies.

Alan G. Lafley, the president and chief executive of Procter & Gamble Co. and a GE director since October 2002, resigned from GM's board April 18.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing April 22, GM cited provisions of the Clayton Antitrust Act requiring companies to periodically review the competition, based on revenue, between companies in which directors hold interlocking seats.

Jerry Dubrowski, a GM spokesman, said that it conducts such …