America's great shrinking companies

Revenues at some of America's best-known companies fell to multiyear lows following the Great Recession. While business is back to prerecession levels for many companies, sales at some continue to decline.

As expected, some of the public corporations struggling to get back to prerecession levels are in the industries that were hurt most by the downturn. Consider the U.S. auto industry, where two of Detroit's iconic car manufacturers sought bankruptcy protection as their annual sales fell.

Homebuilding is another industry that, for the most part, has yet to fully recover from the financial crisis. In some markets, the recession robbed homes of 50% of their value. There was a significant top-line erosion among large homebuilders such as D.R. Horton (DHI) and Lennar (LEN).

Of course, not all sectors were innocent victims of the crisis. The financial services industry had a hand in precipitating the meltdown.

Congress passed the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in 2008 to rescue dozens of financial institutions, most notably American International Group (AIG), which created some of the most toxic tranches of subprime securities that imploded when the housing bubble burst, forcing the Federal Reserve Bank to create a secured credit facility of up to $85 billion to prevent the company's collapse. Since 2008, AIG has sold some of its assets to pay off its government loans.

Read on for a look at five of America's great shrinking companies. Then, find five more companies, and a complete report at 24/7 Wall St.