The Financial News writedown-ometer reached $75.6bn (€52.7bn) as Bear Stearns revealed a further $1.9bn writedown as part of its fourth quarter results, $700m more than it said on November 14 that it expected to write down in this quarter.

This takes the US bank's total writedowns for the year to $2.75bn, the eighth-largest figure posted by any bank. In the third-quarter, Bear Stearns announced a writedowns of $450m due to sub-prime mortgage exposure and $400m against leverage loans.