Merrill said they would consider selling Bloomberg, since the regulators wouldn't consider it's Bloomberg stake as capital.
Merrill has made good progress in whittling down through sales or writedowns two of the three principal pools of assets - loans for leveraged buyouts and commercial real estate - that have hobbled its operations since the start of the credit crisis last summer, Thain said. However, its aggressive writedowns of billions of dollars of subprime-mortgage-stuffed collateralized debt obligations still troubles it.
"That market has continued to deteriorate," Thain said, noting that no buyers want to buy the securities even at deep discounts. He also cited further problems with troubled monoline insurers - firms such as MBIA that wrote insurance against some of its debt positions - in spite of having set aside almost $5 billion of reserves in the first quarter on concern that it wouldn't collect on the positions.
http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/tdameritrade-com/html-story.asp?guid={38b3abdb-b1ac-4ab9-82b5-14ca14c2061e}
Now Lehman's Erin Callan told investors that she knew what prices their assets were worth because of their price discovery mechanism of selling various pieces to various customers.
Looks like we have various opinions from various brokerage firms.
Maybe that's why Merrill analyst Guy Mozkowski lowered his rating on Lehman today.
Wouldn't be the first time that a blonde lied to a room full of guys!
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