CNNMoney - Last Updated: August 6, 2008: 6:46 PM EDT

Consultant firm projects bonuses in financial sector to sink in 2008 on credit problems, decline in business, and mounting layoffs.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Looks like Wall Street bankers can kiss those fat bonuses goodbye this year.

Some bankers’ bonuses will be slashed by nearly half in 2008, and most can expect a 15% to 25% reduction from last year’s levels, according to a recent projection from compensation consultancy firm Johnson Associates.

Johnson Associates expects the big wigs to give up the most, with bonuses of senior firm managers at investment banks tumbling 35% to 45% from 2007 levels. With the public scrutinizing deep-pocketed CEOs when most Americans are penny pinching, shareholders may not stand for executives taking home millions while their companies lose billions, the consultancy firm said.

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BUSINESSWEEK - Stocks in the News August 6, 2008, 6:34PM EST

Shares of the U.S. natural foods leader plunge after it posts a 31% profit drop, as economic troubles hit the organic grocery market

by Ricky McRoskey

early 20% in mid-day trading after it reported third-quarter profits of $33.9 million, a 31% decline from the previous year. The announcement held more bad news for investors: The company said it planned to reduce the number of new store openings by up to 50% and suspend its 20¢ quarterly dividend. It also reported that sales growth at stores open more than one year slowed to 2.6%, from 6.7%.

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FORTUNE - Last Updated: August 6, 2008: 3:37 PM EDT

Investors blanch at the mortgage giant’s effort to reveal the risks it bears as house prices tumble.

Colin Barr, senior writer

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Mortgage giant Freddie Mac (FRE, Fortune 500) says it’s intent on providing a clearer view of its risks. But so far, there’s little sign that investors like what they see.

On Wednesday, CEO Richard Syron said the big government-sponsored mortgage company would offer “significantly more information about our credit position.” Freddie said the numbers should give investors confidence that the company has adequately reserved for future credit losses.

Handily, the figures also give analysts and investors “an erector set” for building their own loss-expectation models. With house prices falling faster than the company expected, and credit quality accordingly deteriorating more rapidly, Freddie seeks to offer “absolute complete transparency,” Syron said.

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InformationWeek - August 6, 2008 09:35 AM

GM’s Chevy Volt is a plug-in hybrid concept car. Tesla Motors’ Roadster is an all-electric vehicle in production. We peek under the hoods of both.

By Cora Nucci

The mood in Detroit has got to be grim and tense. With truck and SUV sales plunging, and financial losses mounting, GM (NYSE: GM) needs to get its plug-in hybrid concept car, the Volt, to market quickly.

That day, however is at least two years off, and one cause for delay is the difficulty GM is having in sourcing a battery vendor.

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BUSINESSWEEK - The Associated Press  August 6, 2008, 5:09PM ET

By ANICK JESDANUN

NEW YORK. The search box is everywhere online these days. It’s built into Web browsers. It’s incorporated into Web sites of all sorts. And it’s a major driver of traffic and revenue for Google Inc. and the like.

So it should come as no surprise that nearly half of Internet users conduct a search on a typical day, up from about a third in 2002, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said Wednesday. Search is approaching e-mail as the most popular thing to do on the Internet; about 60 percent use e-mail on any given day.

Users with college degrees, higher incomes and broadband connections are more likely to conduct a search. So are men and younger users.

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Sillicon Alley Insider - Vasanth Sridharan | August 6, 2008 12:43 PM

Google has sold the search engine marketing arm of DoubleClick’s old Performics business to French advertising conglomerate Publicis for an undisclosed amount.

Publicis has been “cooperating” with Google for more than a year, but we’re not exactly sure what that means — mostly because the companies didn’t reveal any details in a cryptic press conference in January. They did say that “Google would exchange its technological know-how for Publicis’s analytical and media planning expertise,” according to Reuters. We’re assuming this deal won’t have an effect on their prior relationship.

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FORTUNE - Techland, August 5, 2008, 9:04 pm

By Yi-Wyn Yen

Yahoo (YHOO) on Tuesday disclosed that CEO Jerry Yang and other directors were re-elected last week to its board with far fewer votes than previously thought.

On Tuesday, Yahoo said it learned that Broadridge Financial Services, a proxy accounting firm that handles submitting votes for major shareholders, forgot to include millions of votes in its tally. Five of Yahoo’s nine incumbents received a much lower margin of approval after votes from Yahoo’s largest institutional shareholders, Capital World Investors and Capital Research Global Investors, were belatedly added.

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