US companies will today come under renewed pressure to scrap quarterly earnings guidance from a high-profile coalition of business people led by a former regulator.

The group, chaired by William Donaldson, former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, will warn that excessive focus on short-term results damages the country's economy and plays into the hands of hedge funds and private equity groups.

"Quarterly guidance is at best a waste of resources and, more likely, a self-fulfilling exercise that attracts short-term traders," says the report by the group, which was brought together by the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a Washington think-tank.

"The pressure associated with quarterly earnings guidance has been cited as one of the factors fuelling the boom in private equity buy-outs," adds the report by the CED, whose members include influential figures such as Pete Peterson, co-founder of the private equity group Blackstone and William McDonough, former head of the New York Federal Reserve.

The call by the Donaldson group - whose members include representatives from Shell and Chevron, banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and drugmaker Pfizer - highlights growing concerns over corporate America's attention to short-term goals.

That warning echoed the concerns expressed by groups of academics and business people in the past few months.But, unlike other coalitions, the Donaldson group calls on directors, rather than executives or regulators, to change the short-termist culture.