Investment News Briefs

AOL to Cut One-Third of Workforce; Geithner Rebuffs Calls for Resignation; Oil Follows Equities’ Decline; Leading Indicators Hit Two-Year High; U.S. Making Plans for New Iran Sanctions; DirecTV Won’t Rule Out Possible Takeover;

• AOL LLC Chief Executive Tim Armstrong told employees yesterday (Thursday) that he will ask for 2,500 volunteers, about one-third of the company’s workforce, to be laid off, The Wall Street Journal reported. The voluntary layoff program, which is part of an effort to trim some $300 million in annual costs, will begin on Dec. 4 and run through Dec. 11. AOL said the layoffs would result in restructuring charges of up to $200 million, which it announced last week

• U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner yesterday (Thursday) fended off a Republican congressman’s demand that he resign, Bloomberg News reported. Geithner was asked to step down from his post by U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, R-TX, who said the public “has lost all confidence in [Geithner's] ability to the do the job.” Geithner responded by blaming Republican leadership and the administration of George W. Bush for much of today’s financial crisis. “I can’t take responsibility for the legacy of crises you bequeathed the country,” he said, noting that by virtually “any measure” the economy is “substantially stronger today than when [President Barack Obama} took office.”

• Benchmark crude for December yesterday (Thursday) slid $2.12, or 2.66%, to settle at $77.46 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX). The decline followed a similar slide in U.S. equities that drove the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 93.87 points, or 0.9%, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index down 14.9 points, or 1.34%.

• The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Index climbed 0.3% to 103.8 in October, the highest level since September 2007. “The data indicate that economic recovery is finally setting in. We can expect slow growth through the first half of 2010,” Conference Board economist Ken Goldstein said in a statement.

• U.S. President Barack Obama yesterday (Thursday) said that world powers could deploy new sanctions against Iran “within weeks,” as the Middle Eastern nation had failed to embrace a deal that would ship roughly 75% of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for conversion into a power source. “Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say yes to this proposal,” the president said at a joint news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in Seoul. “Our expectation is that, over the next several weeks, we will be developing a package of potential steps that we could take, that would indicate our seriousness to Iran.”

• DirecTV Group Inc. (Nasdaq: DTV) Chairman John Malone told Bloomberg News that he won’t rule out a possible takeover by AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) or Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE: VZ). “Our relationship will continue to broaden and intensify,” said Malone. “It may lead to some more ownership-oriented relationship, or it may not.” DirecTV has about 18 million customers, more than six times Verizon’s FiOS TV service and 10 times AT&T’s U-Verse TV service.