Dow Jones corrects report on GE profit forecast

BOSTON (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.

The stock rebounded to $19.42 in after-hours trading following GE's statement and the correction from Dow Jones.

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)