NEW YORK (Reuters) - A bidder has offered to pay $456,789 for a steak lunch with billionaire investor Warren Buffett, in a charity auction expected to be completed Friday night on eBay Inc's (NasdaqGS:EBAY) website.

The top bid as of noon EDT (1600 GMT) in the 10th annual fundraiser remains well short of last year's record $2.11 million paid by Hong Kong-based investor Zhao Danyang. The starting price was $25,000, and the auction ends at 10 p.m. EDT Friday.

As in recent years, the winner and up to seven friends may dine with the world's second-richest person at the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse in New York.

Zhao, who runs the Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund, had his lunch with Buffett on Wednesday.

The auction benefits the Glide Foundation, a nonprofit in San Francisco's Tenderloin district that offers housing, job training, health and child care, and meals for the poor.

Observers had speculated that the global recession might keep this year's winning bid below last year's record. Bids typically soar in the last few hours of the auction, as bidders who did not want to push the price up early step in.

If the $456,789 bid were to hold up, it would be the fourth-most ever paid for the lunch. Winning bidders

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Electric Co (NYSE:GE) Chief Executive Jeff Immelt said on Friday the United States needs to refocus its economy on manufacturing and exporting if it wishes to recover from a brutal recession.

The world's largest economy can no longer count on consumer spending to drive demand, nor can it rely on Wall Street financial wizardry if it wants its population to continue to enjoy a high standard of living, the head of the largest U.S. conglomerate said.

"We should clear away any arrogance, false assumptions, or a sense that things will be 'OK' just because we are America," Immelt told the Detroit Economic Club. "Our competitive edge has slipped away and this has hit the middle class hard."

The U.S. should work to have manufacturing represent about 20 percent of employment, more than double its current level, he said.

The world's biggest maker of jet engines and electricity- producing turbines said on Friday it would be building a new manufacturing research center outside Detroit that will employ 1,100 people.

The move reflects Immelt's belief that, like many U.S. companies GE has turned too many core technological procedures over to outside contractors and foreign operations.

"In some areas, we have outsourced too much," Immelt said, according to a copy of his prepared