Strikes to protest French job cuts hurt the Lu biscuit unit, Danone said, and higher milk prices eroded profit at Galbani, prompting the cut in book value ahead of a planned sale.
The adoption of fair-value accounting on variable annuity reserves will most likely result in a separate write-down of book value of approximately 1 billion euros to 1.3 billion euros, ING said.
GATX Terminals has assets totaling about $1 billion in book value and generated $294 million of revenue and $26 million of net income in 1999.
The publisher, which made a £144m loss in 2011 thanks to a write-down in the book value of its 200-plus newspapers, cut its cost base by more than 12% or £37.6m last year.
The dividends are tied to earnings by the Starr agencies and increases in the book value of the more than 47 million A.I.G. shares owned by C.V. Starr.
Under the new rules, those assumptions would have to be revised every three months, leading to changes in the book value of the policies.
On Tuesday UBS announced a $19 billion reduction in the book value of its assets because of the subprime mortgage crisis, bringing its total reductions, or write-downs, to nearly $40 billion.
The short sellers were proved right, and also came to be seen as culprits; so was mark-to-market accounting, since it caused sudden, cataclysmic drops in the book value of companies whose holdings had become illiquid.
Ellison got some at $68 in February 2004 todayy, it trades at $75. Boasting zero leverage, the company has an annual growth in tangible book value of 10%.
"The deals will be so good, they will more than make up for a drop in book value," according to John Bruno, owner of Potamkin Cadillac in Manhattan, which also sells Buick, Hummer, Saab and Chevy trucks.
