Writedowns: The Leaders Table

While investment banks are always fighting to be at the top of the leader board when it comes to industry rankings in categories such as M&A fees and Underwriting, one list they do not want to be at the top of is write-downs.  Below we highlight the magnitude of write-downs by various banks and brokerages.  After today's earnings announcement, Merrill Lynch (MER) leads the list with $7.9 bln.

While Bear Stearns (BSC) was originally labeled the poster child for the sub-prime mess, they may be getting a bad rap given they are currently at the bottom of the list.  Another interesting characteristic of the list is how so many of these banks seemed to coincidentally have the same amount of exposure.  Note how Deutsche Bank (DB) and UBS (UBS) each had $3.4 bln in write-downs, JP Morgan (JPM) and Wachovia (WB) each had $1.3 bln, and Lehman (LEH) and BSC each had $700 mln.  Just how exact were the calculations that went into these figures?