Thursday, December 18, 2008

Breaking News-RTRS-UPDATE 7-Morgan Stanley posts big loss; market hopes worst over

NEW YORK, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley reported a much wider-than-expected $2.2 billion quarterly loss on Wednesday on plummeting markets and poor trading moves, while banking and brokerage fees sank.
It was the bank's second loss in the last five quarters, and six times deeper than expected, driven by a laundry list of setbacks: $1.7 billion in writedowns of leveraged buyout loans, $800 million in writedowns of assets held in bank units and $1.8 billion in principal investment losses.