Good morning. General Electric said it was freezing its pension plan for about 20,000 U.S. workers and offering pension buyouts to 100,000 former employees, as the conglomerate joins the ranks of U.S. companies phasing out a guaranteed retirement.

GE is one of the rare big U.S. manufacturers that still allows salaried workers to accrue traditional pension payments, though it closed its plan to new participants in 2012. The company’s profits have evaporated in recent years, prompting GE to slash its dividend and Chief Executive Larry Culp to look for ways to pare its debts.

[Continues below…]

GE’s traditional pension and post-employment benefits programs, which were underfunded by $27 billion as of the end of 2018, are one of the company’s biggest liabilities. The company said the latest changes could reduce its pension deficit by as much as $8 billion.

The company’s pension plan is the second largest by projected obligations, only behind IBM, according to consulting firm Milliman Inc.

Freezing pension plans has become a common technique to reduce risks and shrink corporate balance sheets, said Zorast Wadia, a consulting actuary at Milliman. “You are stopping the bleeding,” Mr. Wadia said. “Freezing the plan alone does nothing to your funding problem that previously exists.”

•  Larry Culp’s GE Plan: Fix, Not Reinvent

The U.S. Labor Department releases September producer-prices data. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal forecast the producer-price index grew 0.1% in September from a month earlier.

Domino’s Pizza, Helen of Troy Ltd. and Levi Strauss are among the companies scheduled to release earnings.

Financial accounting metrics at companies ranging from Uber to Beyond Meat to We Co. have gotten creative, going far beyond the guidelines that fall under generally accepted accounting principles.

Companies claim the made-up metrics are a way for investors to better understand their business, but they create greater discrepancies between the valuations of publicly traded companies. As We’s recently pulled public listing shows, they also can erode investor trust.

• Bonobos, the men’s apparel retailer owned by Walmart, is laying off some staff as Walmart works to narrow losses in its unprofitable U.S. e-commerce division. A few dozen people are being laid off, a personal familiar with the situation said. Bonobos has around 600 employees, said a Bonobos spokeswoman.
   
• Almond, oat, coconut and other milk alternatives have contributed to the steady erosion in sales of cow’s milk over the years. Now, newer meat alternatives made by companies including Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are raising similar concerns for ranchers.
   
• Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. pulled a $36.6 billion bid for London Stock Exchange Group, a deal that would have united two major trading hubs even as both are clouded in political turmoil.
   
• Comcast’s NBCUniversal has consolidated its TV-production business and named a new head of its soon-to-be launched streaming service as part of a broad realignment of its entertainment operations, the company said.
   
• Discovery-backed digital publisher Group Nine Media has agreed to acquire women-focused publisher PopSugar, the companies said, the latest merger among new-media firms hoping that greater scale will help them sell online ads.
   
• Reinsurance company Munich Re has invested $250 million in Next Insurance Inc. in a funding round that valued the small-business insurance provider at more than $1 billion.

Facebook could pay $40 million to settle a lawsuit from advertisers over miscalculated video metrics. The legal battle began in 2016 after Facebook disclosed it had incorrectly calculated the average viewing time for video ads on its platform.

Meanwhile, a top European Union privacy regulator is moving closer to making draft decisions involving Facebook’s WhatsApp and Twitter under the bloc’s new privacy law.

• Some Nissan directors will demand at today’s board meeting to see a list of around 80 Nissan employees who may have assisted former Chairman Carlos Ghosn in alleged wrongdoing, said people familiar with the board’s thinking, setting up a potential clash with management.
   
• Bitcoin’s latest white knight hasn’t slain the dragon. Bakkt, a bitcoin-futures platform created by Intercontinental Exchange, went live two weeks ago. It is a high-profile bet that Wall Street and institutional investors would embrace cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin’s sales pitch has been hijacked by its own risks—from extreme volatility swings to market manipulations, fraud and theft.

Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari said he is “happy” the U.S. central bank is lowering rates. But in an appearance at an event in Prior Lake, Minn., Mr. Kashkari, who has been a steadfast advocate for keeping rates lower than most of his colleagues have wanted, said that he isn’t sure how far the Federal Reserve needs to take a rate-cutting campaign that has resulted in two quarter-percentage point rate cuts this year.

Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell highlighted the importance of an independent central bank, amid steady criticism of the Fed’s monetary policy from President Trump in recent weeks. Speaking at the premiere of a documentary about the late Marriner S. Eccles—the Fed’s chairman from 1934 to 1948—Mr. Powell focused on his predecessor’s efforts to distance the central bank from political considerations.

Joel Steinberg, who has been serving as interim CFO since John Fleurant retired earlier this year, will resume his full-time role as chief risk officer.

AEON Biopharma, a Newport Beach, Calif.-based biopharmaceutical company, named Chris Carr its new finance chief. Mr. Carr most recently served as CFO of Seal Beach, Calif.-based Dendreon Pharmaceuticals.

Write to Mark Maurer at mark.maurer@wsj.com.

Follow the CFO Journal team on Twitter: @CFOJournal, @Nina_Trentmann, @markgmaurer.

The CFO Journal editor, Jack Hagel, can be reached at jack.hagel@wsj.com.