FTAlphavilleFT Alphaville is a 2008 Webby Award Winner

• News
• Markets Live

Merrill Lynch spoiled investors’ appetite for financial stocks yesterday with larger-than-expected writedowns of $9.4bn that underlined the bank’s continuing struggles to emerge from the credit crunch. Merrill’s results, which were announced after the market closed, sent shares in other Wall Street banks lower in after-hours trading. Merrill’s shares, which had closed almost 9% higher, gave up most of those gains. Shares in Citigroup, which reports results today, also fell amid fears the US financial group could suffer big mortgage-related writedowns. Merrill’s performance brings the bank’s losses for the past four quarters to about $19bn, making it one of the biggest casualties of the financial turmoil. John Thain, Merrill’s chairman and CEO, who was hired to stem the tide of losses, said that he continues to see no end to the credit crisis. In contrast to Thain’s bleak outlook, Josef Ackermann, Deutsche Bank’s chief executive, told the FT that the crisis was “at the beginning of the end” because banks and regulators had taken decisive action.