from Dec to March. What gives? Not as good as others at cooking the book?
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Morgan-Stanley-loses-578M-in-apf-14996697.html?.v=1 This doesn’t make sense to me. Can someone add some insight? Firstly, I was not aware that Companies had to mark their own debt to market and run the change through the P&L. Secondly, isn’t this a good thing as the takeover value of the firm is now higher and if MS refinanced it’s debt it could do so at lower interest rates? “Morgan Stanley lost $1 billion in the latest quarter from its investments in real estate, and lost $1.5 billion because its own debt gained in value as investors grew more confident about the bank’s creditworthiness compared with late last year, right after Lehman Brothers collapsed. So if Morgan Stanley had to buy its debt back at the end of the first quarter, it would have had to pay more for it than it would have at the end of last year. And accounting rules require this change to be recorded as a loss. This was the opposite of what happened to some other banks in the first quarter – Citigroup was able to record a $2.7 billion gain because investors grew more worried about its creditworthiness, and in turn, reduced the debt on Citigroup’s books.”