That sinking feeling deepens.......

Europe's biggest bank HSBC has written off $3.2bn (£1.6bn) in the first three months of 2008 as a result of its exposure to the US sub-prime market.

HSBC now stands behind Citibank, UBS and Merrill Lynch as the banks with the largest value of writedowns. It also reported a further $2.6bn of writedowns in its global banking arm. The latest writedown takes the amount of bad debt incurred by the bank in the US to £7.5bn over the past year.

But growth in Asia helped counter the big hit taken on US home loans - meaning profits were still bigger than the same period a year earlier. "I am encouraged by the way we have increased pre-tax profits in every one of the major countries in which we operate in Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Latin America," said group chief executive, Michael Geoghegan.

Mr Geoghegan also dismissed speculation that the firm may need to sell off some of its assets, saying he saw "no need to slim down".

Article..

No doubt the tax payer is already being framed up for a bailout for these parasites. Time to ready the firing squads IMHO.

Pip pip