BRIEFCASE.

Byline: -- Staff and Wire Services

Pfizer to cut sales force

NEW YORK -- Pfizer Inc. said Tuesday it will cut its U.S. sales force by 20 percent, or 2,200 people, as part of a cost-cutting program to transform the company into a more nimble organization as it struggles with sluggish sales.

The drug company has 11,000 sales representatives, and the cuts will be made by the end of the year, according to company spokesman Paul Fitzhenry. He couldn't say how much the cuts would save the company or if it would take any kind of an earnings charge because of the move.

In October, Pfizer said it would slash costs beyond the program announced last year, designed to cut $4 billion in expenses by 2008.

At the time, Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey B. Kindler said there would be no sacred cows in the reorganization. But Pfizer's sales force was always considered one of its greatest strengths, so some observers didn't think it would be on the chopping block.

EMI says it has potential bidder

LONDON -- Record company EMI Group PLC, whose artists include Coldplay and the Beatles, said it received an approach about a possible takeover of the business.

EMI did not say who the potential bidder was.

The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the deal, said European private equity firm Permira Advisors Ltd. made a preliminary takeover offer. A spokesman for Permira of London declined to comment.

Earlier the Financial Times, also citing unidentified people familiar with the situation, reported that companies including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. may be prepared to pay 2.5 billion pounds ($4.85 billion) or more for the company.

US Airways to pitch for Delta

ATLANTA -- US Airways Group Inc. will pitch its $8.6 billion unsolicited offer for Delta Air Lines Inc. in a meeting this week with Delta and the committee representing the unsecured creditors in Delta's bankruptcy case, a lawyer for the committee said Tuesday.

The lawyer, Daniel Golden, said in a telephone interview that the committee's advisers will be present at the meeting in New York, along with US Airways officials and Delta senior executives.

Neither Golden nor spokesmen for Atlanta-based Delta and Tempe, Ariz.-based US Airways would say what day the meeting will take place.

Inventory shows hurdles to drilling

WASHINGTON -- About half the oil and more than a quarter of the natural gas beneath 99 million acres of federal land is off-limits to drilling, the Bush administration says in a report that industry sought to highlight environmental and other hurdles to development.

Just 3 percent of the oil and 13 percent of the gas under federal land is accessible under standard lease terms that require only basic protections for the environment and cultural resources, according to the survey.

An additional 46 percent of the oil and 60 percent of the gas ``may be developed subject to additional restrictions'' such as bans to protect animals and sensitive terrain during parts of the year.

The revised inventory, released Tuesday by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, is starkly different from a study done three years ago.