NEWS AT A GLANCE
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Merrill loses $9.8 billion
Merrill Lynch posted a record quarterly loss of $9.8 billion, or $12.01 a share, after writing down at least $14.1 billion in subprime mortgage assets and bad trades. (Reuters) Analysts were expecting a $4.70-a-share loss. (AP in Yahoo! Finance) The results cement Merrill’s first full-year loss since 1989. Since taking over as CEO last month, John Thain has raised more than $12 billion in capital from outside investors, including $6.6 billion announced Tuesday. “Thain is repositioning the firm to start fresh with a strong balance sheet, once these couple of bad quarters get out of the way,” said Standard & Poor’s analyst Matthew Albrecht. (Bloomberg)
Healthy banks looking for bargains
With the subprime-mortgage fiasco punishing the balance sheets of financial firms, the banks that have come out relatively unscathed are in a good position to buy up weakened rivals. Goldman Sachs has picked up several mortgage-related firms recently, and Wells Fargo has bought three banks in the past six months. And J.P. Morgan, after its lower-than-expected writedowns helped push its market capitalization above Citigroup’s yesterday, is about to make a big play, CEO James Dimon suggested yesterday. “In terms of buying assets or buying companies, we are very open-minded,” Dimon said. (The Wall Street Journal)
