General Electric (GE  ) has agreed to sell its distributed power operations for $3.25 billion to private equity firm Advent International. The unit includes the reciprocating gas engine brands GE Jenbacher and Waukesha, which GE is selling to boost its finances. The sale drew interest from other prospective buyers such as Cummins Inc. (CMI  ) and KKR & Co. (KKR  ) Last month, GE also agreed to see its railroad division in a deal worth $11 billion. This is all part of CEO John Flannery's plan to sell $20 billion worth of assets by the end of 2019.

As part of this restructuring, Flannery has also not ruled out the possibility of breaking up the entire business. His mandate as CEO is to cut costs and recover suffering stock prices. Flannery, who succeeded Jeffrey Immelt last year, is also selling other extraneous businesses such as lighting, while trying to reshape key markets of the company such as aviation and healthcare.

GE was also recently removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The DJIA is trying to make the index a better measure of the economy and industrial companies like GE are simply no longer as prominent in the US economy as banks, healthcare, tech, and consumer companies.

The industrial-engines unit makes multi-ton gas turbines that generate onsite power to keep industrial plants running. The unit's profits fell by 45% last year as sales of power plants and services dropped sharply.

Advent, a global buyout firm, manages about $41 billion in assets across a range of sectors from industrials to telecommunications to financial services. This expected deal with Advent is in fact quite a surprise because buyout firms are usually at a disadvantage in bidding against industry players because they have fewer opportunities to cut overlapping costs.

This deal also comes after the announcement that GE will merge its railroad and locomotives business with Wabtec Corp. This deal was again part of Flannery's plan to focus only on three main units: aviation, energy, and healthcare, which he saw as the most important.