Afternoon Review

General Electric (GE) -8.22%
Standard & Poor’s said it has revised its outlook on GE and its units to negative from stable and affirmed its AAA long-term and A-1+ short-term credit ratings. The negative outlook is based partly on the concerns regarding GE Capital Corps’s future performance and funding. Standard & Poor’s said there is at least a one-in-three chance it will cut GE’s credit rating from the top AAA in the next two years.

This announcement comes two days after GE said it could no longer make business decisions that are harmful to its long-term growth prospects for the sole purpose of maintaining their AAA credit rating.

FedEx (FDX) -2.14%
FedEx said its financial performance is increasingly being challenged by some of the worst economic conditions in the company’s 35-year operating history and it expects conditions to remain difficult through 2009.

FDX has already taken actions to reduce over $1 billion of expenses for all of fiscal 2009 and is now implementing a number of additional cost reduction initiatives, including salary decreases, elimination of merit-based salary increases and suspension of 401 (k) company matching for a minimum of one year.

Ingersoll-Rand (IR) -4.65%
IR cut fourth quarter guidance since it has had lower than expected revenues in all business segments, primarily due to softer North American and sharply declining Western European markets (which the company noted was especially severe over the last six weeks).


Quick Hits

• Credit-Card Users Feel Pain as Banks Reap Gain From U.S. Cash
• IBM, Sun Face ‘Reckoning’ in 2009 as Technology Budgets Shrink
• U.S. Spending on Research to Fall
  
  
  
  Peter Lazaroff, Junior Analyst