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Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Posted on June 11, 2008

Monoline downgrade trips up banks. Citigroup (C), Merrill (MER) and UBS (UBS) could be hit with writedowns of up to $10B due to last week's S&P and Moody's downgrade of bond insurers Ambac (ABK) and MBIA (MBI), which the banks used extensively to insure complex debt securities. The banks were caught off guard by the sudden downgrade, which may have been prompted by a sense the ratings agencies need to shape up quickly. Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney said this week UBS has the $6.3B exposure to the monoline insurers, Citigroup has $4.8B and Merrill has $3B. Crude slips on slackening de...

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