accounting

I wish it were not so, but it is increasingly obvious that every part of the financial sector in the United States is infected by this menacing plague of credit losses and writedowns. Now it comes to light that the five biggest U.S. credit…

Let's hope the UBS earnings report is not as bad as Merrill. If you recall, Citi, Merrills and UBS are the three worst offenders when it comes to writedowns. Given the recent asset sales by RBS and Merrill, one would expect to see some…

A credit writedown is a reduction in the value of an asset as it is carried on a company's balance sheet. As these losses must also be reflected on the income statement, credit writedowns result in massive losses.

After RBS's writedowns on Friday, Bloomberg estimated that we have had nearly $500 billion in writedowns in the so-called 'sub-prime' crisis to date.Barclays, Britain's third-biggest bank, had first-half writedowns of 2.8 billion pounds, it…

AIG has long been one of the largest and best-capitalized insurance and financial-services organization in the world. Before recent scandals, it was one of a few S&P 500 corporations in the U.S. with a AAA rating. Yet, it just reported…

After a week's holiday, I have a huge backlog of stories on offer. Below are the latest writedown stories from the web that I have seen. For the full timeline of news, visit my credit crisis timeline.Also see my list of Bankrupt Global…

The major European banks have gotten into the swing of things with their own reporting season. Today, Deutsche Bank and HBOS reported earnings.Deutsche Bank recorded a pre-tax profit of 642 millioneuros after writedowns of $3.6 billion due…

The blog site EconomPic Data has some nice pictures of Citi's writedowns to date. Here is one. Check out the site for another nice breakdown.According to Bloomberg, Citigroup has written down over $50 billion so far. Click here for a full…

Below are the latest writedown stories from the web. For the full timeline of news, visit my credit crisis timeline.Also see my list of Bankrupt Global Financial Institutions.2008 07 21 Earnings Fall 44% at Bank of America2008 07 22…

Lloyds TSB announced first half results, a 70% fall in pre-tax profits. Yet, Lloyds' management was confident enough to raise the dividend 2p a share to 11. 4p. This strikes me as completely out of touch with market conditions. In the…