It’s a bit like guessing the number of pennies in a jar. Except the jar is the world’s biggest bank. And the pennies are quite big too.
Anyway, ahead of Citi’s Q4 results out next week, Merrill Lynch have joined the chorus of predictions on the scale of Citi’s next writedown, putting the figure at $16bn.
Roughly half-way between the estimate from Sanford Bernstein analysts ($12bn) and Goldman Sachs analysts ($19bn). The variance alone here is surely something to be worried about. A breakdown of Citi’s likely losses, courtesy of Goldman, is available here.
Merrill analyst Guy Moszkowski has also doubled his loss estimate for Citi; putting it at $1.43 a share, up from 73 cents.
