The economic crisis wiped out profits at top world businesses on Wednesday and forced Russia to slash its defence spending as investors awaited key votes on a plan to kick-start the US economy.

Meanwhile factory output in the recession-hit eurozone was reported by the EU's data agency to have fallen by 2.6 percent in December and by 12 percent for 2008 as a whole, the biggest slumps since records began in 1990.

"It seems certain that eurozone manufacturers will continue to find life very difficult over the coming months," warned Howard Archer, chief European economist at London-based research group Global Insight.

In further fallout from the crisis, Russian lawmakers said they would cut the defence budget by 15 percent and Ukraine's finance minister resigned in political infighting as a deep recession grips the former Soviet republic.

The gloomy outlook was spelled out in the latest batch of dismal corporate results from around the world, with many companies bracing for worse times ahead after reporting net losses or sharp falls in profit in 2008.

Japanese electronics giant Pioneer Corporation said it would cut 10,000 jobs and quit the television business as it prepared for record-high net losses of some 1.4 billion dollars for the current financial year to March.

French carmaker Renault, which is due to receive a controversial three-billion-euro loan from the French state on condition that it does not cut jobs in France, said its net profits had plunged 78 percent in 2008.

British aero engine maker Rolls-Royce reported a net loss of 1.34 billion pounds (1.90 billion dollars, 1.48 billion euros) in 2008, while Swedish-Swiss engineering giant ABB saw annual net profits slip 17 percent last year.

Austria's Wienerberger, the world's biggest brick maker, said its earnings fell 60 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 as the construction sector began to feel the full force of the global economic slowdown.

"The almost daily downward revision in growth forecasts shows that the bottom has not been reached. Just how long and how deep the crisis will be can't be foreseen," the Austrian company said in a statement.

After reporting a 50-percent slump in annual net earnings, Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced it would be receiving a 19.5-billion-dollar cash injection from China's state-owned aluminium company Chinalco.

The deal would be China's biggest ever investment in a foreign company and analysts said it showed China's growing economic might and would give China more leverage over the resources and raw materials that have fuelled its boom.

But the attention of investors remained glued on the United States, where lawmakers were expected to vote on Friday on an economic plan that President Barack Obama has billed as the only alternative to "catastrophe."

The 789-billion-dollar (614-billion-euro) package of infrastructure projects and tax cuts aims to revive the US economy — the world's biggest — and has been held up by bickering between Democrats and Republicans.

Financial markets have responded negatively however to efforts to get the US economy back on track that have been seen as unclear and insufficient.

US stocks tumbled in early trading, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping 1.99 percent and the tech-driven Nasdaq down 0.88 percent.

London's FTSE 100 index of leading shares closed down 0.76 percent, falling along with other main European stock markets. Tokyo's Nikkei stock index plunged 3.03 percent largely because of fears over the US economy.

"The stimulus bill may be well intended, but until the housing crisis is addressed in full force and until the financial sector is fixed" there will be no quick solution, said Patrick O'Hare of Briefing.com.

Doubts over US rescue efforts also pushed the dollar lower against the Japanese yen on global currency markets.

The price of oil meanwhile fell towards 35 dollars a barrel in New York in a market plagued by weak energy demand because of the crisis.

In a brief respite from bad news on the economy, the United States reported a surprise 1.0-percent rebound in retail sales in January after six months of decline.

Meanwhile in France, oil major Total announced the highest annual net profit in French corporate history at 13.9 billion euros for 2008.

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