Merrill Lynch and Citigroup expected to post huge write-downs

Posted Apr 13th 2008 3:10PM by Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: Earnings Reports, Forecasts, Citigroup Inc. (C), Merrill Lynch (MER)

Citigroup (NYSE: C) is expected to post write-downs of as much as $12 billion in first quarter and have a loss of over $3 billion. Merrill Lynch (NYSE: MER) could show write-offs of $5 billion and a loss of $2.7 billion. According to The Times, Merrill "is expected to knock a further 20% from the value of its sub-prime holdings, in spite of the fact that it announced $18 billion of write-downs only three months ago."

The paper also reports that "Deutsche Bank is attempting to offload some of its €35 billion (£28 billion) of toxic debt to a consortium of private-equity firms."

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Tags: C, CItigroup, Deutsche Bank, inthenews, MER, Merrill Lynch, private equity, subprime, write-downs

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

4-13-2008 @ 4:01PM

John said...

I really like prudent bankers. Their decisions are all so, you know, grown up.

What a bunch of dinkbrains. They're worse than the Post Office ever dreamed of being.

4-13-2008 @ 9:58PM

Kevin said...

Just a simple question...? Now that Bank of America is fixing to close on the aquisition of Countrywide, will these two bankers suffer from the scrutiny of the press that Countrywide did? Will the federal government bail out Citigroup and Merrill like they did Bear Stearns...? Will Charles Schumer relentlesly hound the CEO's of these two companies as he did at Countrywide...? I guess that's yet to be seen.

4-14-2008 @ 9:07AM

B. Harrison said...

All of these "write downs" can't be related to the subprime mortgage loan debacle. Some of the "write downs" are based on previous overstatement of the value of stocks based on phony profitibility financial reports from various corporations, which is simply "fraudulent" inducement for investors to purchase those stocks and for the bonuses, and benefits paid to the managment of those corporations. Future repetitions of these problems will not be deterred unless those responsible individiuals are prosecuted for financial fraud. Otherwise a lack of integrity in financial accounting will undermine investor confidence in the markets.