Merrill Lynch: -96% REVENUE FALL

Can you spell doom? This is horrendous. I thought it was bad, but not this bad.

How can a business tank -96% in revenue, we are not talking profit, but revenue!!!

From a good friend on Skype (OR connection):


$248,000 Average Pay

Even if Merrill set aside nothing for compensation in the fourth quarter, the firm’s 60,900 employees still would reap an average of $184,000 in compensation and benefits for the full year.

In 2007, Merrill paid out a total of $15.9 billion in compensation, or about $248,000 per employee.

Merrill’s revenue for the first nine months of this year totaled $834 million, or $13,695 per employee, compared with $19.4 billion in the 2007 period.

So they pay 248K per employee with revenue this year 13K per employee. Ouch...


I said earlier that the revenue of the banks was a function of volume x velocity. Since monetary volume is going down and velocity is halting (no CDO for example) you have not a linear problem but a square one. But -96%!!!

The shadow banking system is dead. Died with amazing speed. Further proof that they were not beast living on capital but beasts living on flow. Flow disappeared the beast disappeared.

This could get very ugly. I believe DOW will play with the 6500 barrier as a result.
Swift nationalization of the banking system in the USSR of A is probably the only way this will not turn into an economic nuclear winter. Brace yourselves.

This does not bode well. I was hoping the banking system would stabilize

Comments

Unknown said…
Where is it being reported that Merrill's revenue is down 96% for the first 9 months of this year? That doesn't make sense.
Barry Kelly said…
"-96% revenue fall" and "tank -96% in revenue" are double negatives, and equivalent to 96% increases in revenue.

Just sayin'.
Anonymous said…
I'm having trouble understanding why this is bad. If you take a whole bunch of people who are good at math, and lock them up in Manhattan playing money games with each other, aren't you destroying the real value they could have created, even if they were just counting chicken gizzards at the Swanson's packing plant?
adt43wt342 said…
Jsight, it is all over the news. I think it is a year over year comparison

Bary, you are right... touche :)

Dmarti, this is really bad because the theory that "finance is disconnected from the real economy" is just bullshit. If your banking system fails, you are going to see serious pain in the real economy, already letters of credit are hard to come by.... this will lead to nationalization of the banking system. Also do me a favor and don't spit on the math guys, they are the ones that can find a way through this mess.
This is the original article

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aqSGYyeo7e4g

They added this sentence: "The plunge in revenue stemmed from trading losses on bonds and other assets." and removed the 96% plunge reference (although it's still that way (891M vs 19B)

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