Merrill Lynch Slips To Huge Loss In Q1; To Cut About 4K Jobs

'The company attributed the sharp fall in revenue primarily to net write-downs totaling $1.5 billion related to U.S. ABS CDOs and credit valuation adjustments of negative $3 billion related to hedges with financial guarantors, most of which related to U.S. super senior ABS CDOs. The top line results were also negatively impacted by net write-downs related to leveraged finance and residential mortgage exposures. However, these were offset by a net benefit of $2.1 billion due to the impact of the widening of Merrill Lynch's credit spreads on the carrying value of certain of its'