(Updates throughout with Dow Jones correction, GE response)
BOSTON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Dow Jones news service corrected
a report that had quoted General Electric Co's top executive
about 2009 earnings after the report battered GE shares and
sparked a late stock-market sell-off.
The report had helped push the Dow Jones industrial average
and Standard & Poor's 500 Index down from near session highs at
3:30 p.m. into negative territory 2 minutes before the close.
The correction made clear that GE Chief Executive Jeff
Immelt had not forecast 2009 profit to be flat.
The news service said Immelt had been speaking
hypothetically when he told a business group in Spain that he
would ask his managers to maintain profits even if revenues at
their businesses fell as much as 10 percent to 15 percent.
"There was no forecast, no guidance given here," GE
spokesman Russell Wilkerson said. The U.S. conglomerate plans
to issue its 2009 profit forecast in December.
The report, which hit the news wire in the final 20 minutes
of regular trading, hit GE shares. The shares dropped 4
percentage points at the end of the trading day, to end down
1.5 percent at $19.20 on the New York Stock Exchange.
GE has already warned Wall Street that profit will tumble
this year as a result of troubles at its hefty finance arm and
analysts, on average, look for profit of $1.95 per share,
according to Reuters Estimates, down 11 percent from last
year.
Wall Street expects GE profit to fall another 9 percent to
$1.78 next year, although analysts were looking for revenue to
rise 2 percent to $191.7 billion.
Dow Jones is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp . It
competes with Reuters News, a unit of Thomson Reuters Corp, in
providing news and financial data.
(Reporting by Scott Malone in Boston, additional reporting by
Robert MacMillan and Kristina Cooke in New York; Editing by
Andre Grenon, Gary Hill)
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