Bank Troubles Continue
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When Citigroup and Merrill Lynch each fessed up to nearly $10 billion in losses last quarter, investors believed the companies had finally scrubbed their books clean. Those hopes were a bit premature.
“The fourth quarter felt like the kitchen sink [quarter],” said Jaime Peters, a bank stock analyst at Morningstar. “We are going to find out it necessarily wasn’t.”
Citi and Merrill are among a group of major financial firms due to deliver ugly results for the first quarter in the coming week. The first quarter was marked by the near collapse of Bear Stearns, continued credit market woes and increased signs that the U.S. economy is indeed in a recession.
Overall, analysts anticipate that the banks’ results won’t be quite as bad as they were when they announced grim fourth-quarter results three months ago. But banks still find themselves squeezed by many of the same problems that plagued them at the end of 2007.
