Circuit City on Monday announced that it will close 155 of its stores nationwide in a host of key markets. The Richmond, Va.-based company also said it would hold off on opening new stores. The closings come amid slumping sales and weak economy, factors that have been hurting consumer electronics retailers in recent months.

"Since late September, unprecedented events have occurred in the financial and consumer markets causing macroeconomic trends to worsen sharply," said Circuit City Vice Chairman and acting President and CEO James A. Marcum in a statement. "The weakened environment has resulted in a slowdown of consumer spending, further impacting our business as well as the business of our vendors. The combination of these trends has strained severely our working capital and liquidity, and so we are making a number of difficult, but necessary, decisions to address the company’s financial situation as quickly as possible." 

Circuit City closing 155 of its stores and laying off 17 percent of its work force will leave consumers in a lurch, especially as the ever important holiday shopping season begins rearing its head.

"For consumers, a lack of diversity is never good," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis of the NPD Group, a retail industry analysis firm. "Clearly, people closing stores, especially one of the big guys, isn’t a good thing."  (LINK)

This comes four days after Circuit City received a warning notification it might be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange if its stock price remains below the $1 dollar requirement. Under NYSE policy, in order to cure the deficiency for this continued listing standard, the company’s common stock share price and the average share price over a consecutive 30-trading-day period must both exceed $1.00 by six months following receipt of the non-compliance notice.The NYSE noted specifically that the company was "below criteria" for the NYSE’s price criteria for common stock because the average closing price of the company’s common stock was less than $1.00 per share over a consecutive 30-trading-day period as of October 22, 2008. (NYSE:CC)

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