Carrefour, Europe's top retailer, slashed its dividend and halted investment plans in anticipation of another tough year at home in France and in austerity-hit southern Europe.The world's second-biggest retailer behind Wal-Mart Stores Inc halved its dividend on Thursday to preserve cash and put its plan to revive its European hypermarkets on hold.Carrefour, posting a 19 percent drop in 2011 profit in its final results before boss Lars Olofsson steps down, said it was halting conversions of its new Carrefour Planet hypermarket format beyond 2012 because the new format had so far fallen short of expectations.This will allow the group to focus on a more immediate plan to lower prices to lure back shoppers who cut back on purchases of discretionary non-food items in France, Greece, Spain and Italy. It will also accelerate its expansion in e-commerce.
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (Walmart) operates retail stores. Shares of WMT remained unchanged at $59.86. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $48.31 and as high as $62.63. On average, 9155090 shares of WMT exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 19471.
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