NEW YORK — Merrill Lynch on Thursday said it would cut another 3,000 jobs after more than $6.5 billion of fresh write-downs pushed it to a loss for the first quarter.
It marks the third straight quarterly loss for Merrill amid a global credit crisis that began last summer. Banks and brokerages have racked up nearly $200 billion of write- downs to date, with more feared to come.
John Thain, hired as chief executive four months ago to clean up the firm’s books, cautioned that things were unlikely to improve in the next couple of quarters. The New York-based brokerage lost about $2 billion during the most recent quarter and has now written off about $29 billion worth of risky asset- backed securities and leveraged loans.
“This was about as difficult a quarter as I’ve seen in my 30 years on Wall Street,” Thain told analysts during a conference call. “We are planning for a slower and more difficult next couple of months and probably next couple of quarters but are also hopeful for our full-year 2008 results.”
Merrill Lynch lost $2.14 billion, or $2.19 per share, after paying preferred dividends, during the first quarter. That was well below the profit of $2.11 billion, or $2.26 per share, a year earlier. Total revenue fell to $2.93 billion, from $9.6 billion a year earlier.
Results missed Wall Street projections for a loss of $1.99 per share on $3.7 billion of revenue, according to analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
