On Feb 21, 2008, at 1:22 PM, ulisse mangialaio wrote:
> could somebody please explain to me the conceptual difference
> between a write-down and a bailout of one'own investments, as is
> the case with dresdner bank today?
Dresdner announced that it will essentially take a structured investment vehicle - one of those fancy off-balance-sheet entities that financed long-term risky loans by borrowing in short-term markets that have now shut down - onto its balance sheet. Since it wasn't officially an asset of Dresdner, they couldn't write it off. But now it is. So, conceptually, it's a bailout of something non- Dresdner by Dresdner itself. Though to paraphrase the journalism aphorism (there's no such thing as off the record), there's no such thing as off-balance-sheet.
Doug