Mutual Benefit's sales and service structure, with 1,400 agents, will remain in place.

Contracts of sale could not be closed, and some 113 sales remain in limbo.

"We expect new-home sales to remain in a 650,000-to-700,000 range for the next several months."

For many companies, sales remain sluggish and expense ratios continue to be high.

Tom Meredith, Dell's chief financial officer, said in a statement that the company's sales had remained strong.

Although several software updates were released, sales remained low, resulting in financial problems for the company.

Global sales of the album remained at five million copies through September 2010.

Still, October was the third consecutive month that sales remained at an annual rate of more than four million.

But sales remained significantly behind last year's levels, falling 10.7 percent from November 2005.

Employees at foreign plants were not affected because sales overseas have remained strong.