Wall Street crashes

US stocks took a severe beating in the morning trade with concerns over the financial health of Citigroup and sour retail data pushing Dow Jones Industrial Average deep into the red.

The two other benchmark indices -- Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 -- plunged as much as three per cent.

Shares of ailing Citi plummeted a whopping 18 per cent after the company said it would sell the majority stake in its brokerage unit to Morgan Stanley. The move has sparked fears about the health of the banking behemoth which has already received two lifelines from the Federal government.

After two hours into trading, Dow was down 239.42 points or 2.83 per cent at 8,209.14 points.

Further, Nasdaq Composite tumbled 2.83 per cent to 1,502.62 points.

S&P 500 too slipped into the negative territory shedding 3.13 per cent to 844.60 points.

The scrip of Citi declined 18 per cent to touch the intra-day low of 4.82 dollars.

On the other hand, gloomy retail data has raised fears about the country's economy which has already entered into a recession.

According to the latest statistics from the Commerce Department, the nation's retail sales dropped 2.7 per cent in December, which is much worse than an expected fall of 1.2 per cent.

Meanwhile, European banking major Deutsche Bank today said that it expects to post a fourth quarter loss of 4.8 billion euro.