Write Downs

Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. took nearly $1 billion in write-downs on three stocks last quarter under pressure from U.S. regulators who disagreed with the company's accounting for losses in those shares, according to a series of letters. The write-downs are the latest development in an ongoing dispute between Berkshire, which maintains that the companies are strong and that their shares will rebound over time, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has consistently taken a view that the losses are not temporary and should be recorded.

DreamWorks Animation SKG said it would take an $87-million charge on last year's holiday movie "Rise of the Guardians," marking the largest write-down the studio has ever taken for one of its own movies. Analysts had estimated that the studio would take a write-down of from $70 million to nearly $100 million on the film, which represented a rare box-office misfire for DreamWorks, creator of the popular "Shrek," "Kung Fu Panda" and "Madagascar" films. "Rise of the Guardians," which cost about $145 million to make, has generated $302 million in global box-office ticket sales since its debut in late November, well short of a typical DreamWorks Animation movie.

UBS may cut as many as 8,000 jobs as it grapples with the biggest credit write-downs of any European bank and an $11.4-billion first-quarter loss. Switzerland's biggest bank, which had a $2.85-billion profit a year earlier, is set to spell out plans for layoffs when it reports detailed results Tuesday. The company will probably say it will eliminate between 2,500 and 3,000 jobs in its investment bank, more than 10% of the division, two people familiar with the matter said. "UBS is scaling down investment banking," including reducing trading bets and giving up off-balance-sheet units, said Frankfurt, Germany-based Landsbanki Kepler analyst Dirk Becker, who advises clients to reduce holdings of UBS. It is realistic to estimate that the company will fire 10% of its 83,000 employees overall, he said.

DreamWorks Animation may end up losing nearly $100 million on its recent holiday release "Rise of the Guardians. " That's the sobering prediction of Lazard Capital Markets analyst Barton Crockett.  In a research note on Wednesday, Crockett said he expects the Glendale-based studio will take a $96 million write-down on "Rise of the Guardians," which has been a rare box office flop for DreamWorks. 'Rise of the Guardians,' which cost about $145 million to make, has generated $261 million in global box office ticket sales since its debut in late November, well below that of a typical DreamWorks Animation movie.  The movie -- about a group of folk heroes, including the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, who join forces to protect children from an evil nemesis -- has yet to open in New Zealand, Poland, Turkey and Japan.

Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank, reported weaker-than-expected revenue and a second straight quarterly loss after its limping mortgage business triggered write-downs and legal settlements. Bank of America's Merrill Lynch businesses ? including retail brokerage and investment banking ? were profitable but did not make enough money to overcome the bank's massive losses from mortgages. The bank reported a fourth-quarter loss of $1.57 billion, or 16 cents a share, compared with a loss of $5.2 billion, or 60 cents, a year earlier.

MBIA Inc., the largest bond insurer, was sued by shareholders over claims that the company hid its potential losses from securities backed by mortgages. The suit alleges that Chief Executive Gary C. Dunton and Chief Financial Officer Charles Edward Chaplin violated federal securities laws by issuing false financial statements, regulatory filings and statements during investor calls. The company reported fourth-quarter write-downs and expenses this month of about $4 billion related to mortgage securities.

Societe Generale, France's second-largest bank, said Thursday that unauthorized trading and sub-prime mortgage-related write-downs led to a record $4.9-billion net loss in the fourth quarter. The red ink reflected $7.2 billion in losses racked up by junior trader Jerome Kerviel, as well as $4.3 billion in write-downs related directly or indirectly to the credit market turmoil triggered by losses in the U.S. housing market. The Kerviel scandal was announced Jan. 24, shocking the global banking system.

Signaling that Big Oil's heyday is over for now, ConocoPhillips posted an enormous fourth-quarter loss, driven by $34 billion in asset write-downs and plunging crude prices. It also gave a dire forecast for the next couple of years. Chairman and Chief Executive Jim Mulva said the nation's third-largest oil company was preparing for a "significant, multiyear recession." The Houston-based company's net income for the October-December period amounted to a loss of $21.37 a share, compared with a profit of $4.4 billion, or $2.71 a share, a year earlier.

Citigroup Inc. said Tuesday that it planned to sell $3 billion of common stock to bolster its capital levels, sending its shares down in after-hours trading. The largest U.S. bank is raising capital after suffering a $15-billion net loss over the last two quarters and reporting more than $45 billion in write-downs and credit losses since June 30. Chief Financial Officer Gary Crittenden said Citigroup had received "strong" interest in the public offering. The company said the issue might grow in size.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. gave to the market with one hand Tuesday -- and took away with the other. The investment banking titan comforted investors early on by reporting much-better-than-expected fiscal second-quarter earnings. That helped ease concerns about the financial sector that were aggravated last week by Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc.'s warning of a huge loss. But later in the day a team of Goldman analysts helped spark another sell-off in financial shares with a prediction that commercial banks might have to raise $65 billion more in capital this year to rebuild their balance sheets amid the ongoing stream of credit-related write-downs.

NEW YORK - Citigroup's move to sack more than 11,000 workers may foreshadow bigger cuts as its newly installed chief executive shakes up the lumbering Wall Street behemoth. The New York bank's restructuring - coupled with a $1-billion write-down in the fourth quarter - came as Citi, like other financial giants, suffers through a hangover from the housing meltdown and struggles to adjust to the resulting regulations. "This is simply just the beginning," said Todd Hagerman, an analyst at Sterne Agee.

Could it get any worse for hobbling Hewlett-Packard Co.? HP's stock plummeted 12% on Tuesday to its lowest price in a decade after the company said it was writing off $8.8 billion because it was duped into overpaying for a British software maker. The surprise revelation came as HP reported another quarterly loss and gave a weak first-quarter outlook. "The magnitude of the charge is pretty enormous," said Jayson Noland, senior analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co. "It's really bad and it's really expensive and it's really distracting.

The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley is making it easy to try out a gratitude journal, with an interactive online project launched this month that's shareable on social media. At http://www.Thnx4.org , anyone can sign up for a two-week journal plan that includes prompts to get your grateful thoughts flowing. It also includes a survey so researchers can mine the data to look at the effects of gratitude in many specific ways, Emiliana Simon-Thomas, who, with Robert Emmons of UC Davis and others, developed the $5.6-million project, said Thursday.

Walt Disney Co. will take a $50 million write-down in the current fiscal quarter for a stop-motion animation project it canceled in August. The untitled movie was to be directed by Henry Selick, the well respected filmmaker behind "Coraline" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas. " Previously set to be released in October 2013, the picture had been in production for about a year when new Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn halted work. News of the write-down came in a presentation that Disney chief financial officer Jay Rasulo made to investors at the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference in Beverly Hills on Thursday.

Meg Whitman, looking to get struggling Hewlett-Packard Co. back on track, continued to chip away at the technology giant's problems with a new round of financial moves designed to clean up its balance sheet. In a company update Wednesday, HP said it would take an $8-billion accounting charge in its fiscal third quarter related to its 2008 purchase of Electronic Data Systems. HP bought the technology outsourcing firm for $13.2 billion, a price that analysts and investors said at the time was too high.

Microsoft Corp. will record a hefty $6.2-billion write-down in its fourth quarter, mostly related to the disappointing performance of an online advertising business it acquired five years ago. The charge will probably mean a loss for Microsoft in the quarter, which ended in June. The company plans to report its fourth-quarter and fiscal-year earnings July 19. Analysts polled by Bloomberg had estimated that Microsoft would earn about $5.3 billion for the quarter. The Redmond, Wash., software behemoth said the accounting adjustment, known as a goodwill impairment, was "substantially the result" of buying Internet advertising firm aQuantive for $6.3 billion in August 2007.

MCA Inc. on Tuesday reported a 35% decline in net income for 1984, despite record revenue. The Universal City-based company blamed the "very disappointing results" of its motion picture releases for the earnings decline. For the fourth quarter ended last Dec. 31, MCA reported net income of $18.58 million, down 25% from the same period the year before. The filmed entertainment division posted an operating loss of $2.

Reflecting the harsh prospects in the oil industry, Baker International Corp. said Wednesday that it sustained about a $270-million loss in its second fiscal quarter due primarily to a write-down of corporate assets. The loss, which represents a dramatic 27% reduction in Baker's net worth, is expected by some oil analysts to signal another wave of accounting adjustments by other oil service firms to reflect the continued declining value of their business in the wake of plummeting oil prices.

The cancellation and hefty write-down of HBO's"Luck" and the closure of a TV channel in India put a damper on an otherwise solid first quarter forTime Warner Inc. The New York media giant reported a profit of $583 million for the quarter ended March 31, compared with $653 million for the same period in 2011, an 11% drop. Revenue was up 4% to $7 billion. "We're off to a great start to the year, and we're benefiting from strong momentum for our content across our businesses," Time Warner Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes said Wednesday.

California walked away with the biggest chunk of this week's landmark foreclosure settlement partly because of the state's size but also because of Bank of America's desire to escape the legacy of its Countrywide problems. The nation's three largest mortgage servicers — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo & Co. — committed to provide California $12 billion in principal write-downs, including through short sales, over the next three years, the single largest such commitment to come out of the negotiations.