Investment banks to unveil earnings

Jill Barshay Apr 14, 2008

TEXT OF STORY

Renita Jablonski: More Wall Street investment banks also turn in their earnings this week. And they won’t be pretty. Jill Barshay has more from New York.


Jill Barshay: The first quarter of the year won’t just be remembered for Bear Stearns’ brush with bankruptcy. Some of the nation’s largest financial institutions — like Merrill Lynch and Citigroup — are expected to report losses, too. Al Goldman is chief market strategist at A.G. Edwards.

Al Goldman: Earnings from the financial sector are going to be miserable.

Market watchers say there could be billions more write downs. David Darst is chief investment strategist at Morgan Stanley. He worries defaults could spread from mortgages to the corporate loans, auto loans and credit card debts banks have on their books.

David Darst: Generally when the financial sector has problems, it a creates a form of frailty and weakness in other parts of the economy.

Darst says he’ll be paying more attention to what bank executives predict for the rest of the year than how bad their numbers were these past three months.

In New York, I’m Jill Barshay for Marketplace.

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