Today's Headlines

Bloomberg:
- Citigroup Inc.(C) Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit told employees he doesn't plan to break up the company, aiming to reassure workers as the stock resumed a skid that has erased more than half its value in three days.

- Wal-Mart Stores Inc.(WMT), the world’s largest retailer, unexpectedly announced the retirement of Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott after almost nine years at the helm, replacing him with overseas chief Mike Duke.

- President-Elect Barack Obama's transition team is exploring a swift, prepackaged bankruptcy for automakers as a possible solution to the industry's financial crisis, according to a person familiar with the matter.

- The U.S. has a duty to continue with plans to plans to install elements of a missile-defense system in Poland even after a presidential change, the east European country's defense minister said. ``The elections in the United States and the change in administration there shouldn't have any affect on contracts that have already been signed,'' Minister Bogdan Klich told daily Rzeczpospolita in remarks confirmed by the ministry. ``Nothing has changed as far as the missile shield goes.''

- Sandra Manzke, an investor in hedge funds for more than 20 years, wants her peers to band together to stop what she calls “outrageous” behavior in the $1.5 trillion industry. Manzke, 60, who founded Rye, New York-based Tremont Capital Management Inc. in 1985, sent an e-mail this week to 500 wealthy individuals, money managers and fund of funds calling on them to fight high fees and practices such as limiting or suspending client withdrawals. Her e-mail was forwarded to so many people that she’s gotten more than 500 responses, she said. All of them have been positive.

- Hedge funds cut stock holdings by almost two thirds from a year ago, signaling that they are less willing to take risks amid tighter credit and almost $1 trillion in writedowns and losses, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said. Net holdings of equities decreased to 17 percent from 47 percent a year ago, David Kostin, who leads Goldman's New York- based portfolio strategy team, wrote in a note. ``Hedge funds may have returned closer to their roots as `hedged' investors, less dependent on market direction to produce returns, and migrated away from the levered long strategies that many funds pursued during the upward-trending market of 2002 to 2006,'' the New York-based strategist said. Goldman's 19-stock gauge of companies most-owned by hedge funds tumbled 60 percent this year before today, led by drops of about 90 percent for MGIC Investment Corp. and AK Steel Holding Corp. All but three companies in the gauge retreated more than 40 percent. Hedge funds now own 3.5 percent of U.S. stocks, down from 4.5 percent in the third quarter, he said. Hedge funds' biggest positions are in financial companies, with $85 billion in long positions and $109 billion in short sales, Kostin said.

- Developing nations' borrowing costs rose the most in a month this week, hampering the ability of governments to refinance $1.2 trillion of short-term debt and hastening appeals for international bailouts. The extra yield investors demand to own emerging-market government bonds instead of U.S. Treasuries climbed for an eighth day, to 7.76 percentage points from 6.7 percentage points last week, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s EMBI+ index.

Wall Street Journal:

- An unexpected drop in U.S. electricity consumption has utility companies worried that the trend isn't a byproduct of the economic downturn, and could reflect a permanent shift in consumption that will require sweeping change in their industry. Numbers are trickling in from several large utilities that show shrinking power use by households and businesses in pockets across the country.

MarketWatch.com:

- The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to host a Monday meeting with international regulators to examine whether new regulations in the U.S. and other countries seeking to stop abusive short-selling practices have been effective.

Detroit Free Press:

- The UAW is negotiating the possible elimination of its controversial jobs bank and is considering other concessions to help Detroit's automakers win low-cost loans from Congress, people familiar with negotiations said late Thursday. Union officers from several locals said they did not know if the concession had been made but expected the jobs bank to be ended as part of a package of shared sacrifice when the automakers and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger return to Congress early next month. The jobs bank pays laid-off workers, sometimes for years.

Reuters:
- Intel Corp's (INTC) cut in its fourth-quarter revenue outlook earlier this month was the final revision by the world's top computer chip maker, which is grappling with weakening demand, Chairman Craig Barrett said on Friday. "We've made our forecast for the fourth quarter and are not revising it further," he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Lisbon.