Writing Down

Surprise, surprise...

"CS has written $2.85 billion off the value of its asset-backed investments and found mismarking and pricing errors on its books, it revealed on Tuesday, sending its shares plummeting."

It was first Julius Bear, then Merill Lynch, then Citi...and sub prime blood was soon all over markets. But the thing that pissed me off is not that CS is writing off a loss, the thing that pissed me off was the timing it did that.

Time and again it reported that '07 3rd quarter, 4th quarter had earnings despite writing downs (of which are not so big a magnitude). And it had to wait till 1st quarter to announce the big bath write down.

Surely it would have its balance sheet tidied up way back in '07 right? I mean where's the integrity of the company? Why wait till now for this big write down?

Whoever is being this decision, reputation has indeed fell deep down in the pit. Let's wait till the next can of worms pops up.

Sorry about my ranting, but I am really quite disappointed about the integrity of the company here...which I always thought was respectable.