Wal-Mart trims fat to focus on e-retail

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Wal-Mart is restructuring in an effort to ramp up its competitiveness in U.S. e-retail, especially against rival Amazon. The retail giant is paring down its six business divisions into four, and reorganizing its 44 organizational regions into 36. Several analysts told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that such consolidation is only likely to continue as Wal-Mart seeks to hold its own in online channels. “If they’re going to try and run as lean as possible without cutting into muscle,” said Brian Yarbrough of Edward Jones Investments, “they’re going to cut as much fat as they can to try to figure out ways to offset the e-commerce losses and hopefully, over time, make that division more profitable.”