General Electric Co. intends to get rid most of its GE Capital unit and focus on its core industrial operations, in a landmark decision for both the company and, perhaps, the economy too, Fortune reported.

GE said today it would shed more than four-fifths of its in-house bank over the next three years, bringing an end to the days when it depended on the freewheeling unit’s financial engineering skills to generate half of its profits.

By 2018, it said, more than 90 percent of GE earnings will come from its core industrial businesses.

By that time, GE aims to have squeezed $35 billion out GE Capital in the form of dividends to the parent company, which will go a long way to funding a $50 billion share buyback program that the conglomerate also announced Friday.

More immediately, GE said it has agreed to sell the bulk of its real estate portfolio to Blackstone Group, Wells Fargo & Co. and others for a total of $26.5 billion.

The plan will almost certainly ensure that GE Capital no longer has to carry the extra regulatory burden of being a “systemically important financial institution,” a tag it got in 2013 as the Obama administration pushed expensive new capital requirements onto the nation’s most important lenders.

New regulations had been a big factor in GE Capital’s declining profitability: Profits fell 12 percent last year, and the division returned a mere $3 billion in dividends to its parent.