Baker Hughes Board Accused of Helping GE Raid It for Cash

A shareholder of oilfield services giant Baker Hughes Inc. is accusing its directors of letting parent company General Electric Co. raid its value to satisfy its own “desperate need for liquidity.”

Through its majority control of BH’s voting shares and board of directors, GE orchestrated a series of stock sales and buybacks last November that effectively transferred billions in cash from BH’s coffers to GE’s, according to a complaint filed March 13 in Delaware’s Chancery Court.

Baker Hughes “was forced to expend more than $1.5 billion in company cash to help solve GE’s problems, allow GE to flood the ...