Banking executives wary of writedowns

From the Editors of American Banker
Almost half the banking sector’s top executives say it has gotten easier to raise capital in the past six months — perhaps none too soon, considering their forecast for writedowns.
In a new KPMG LLC survey, 96 percent of chief executives and other senior bank industry officials said they expect the sector to get hit by heavy additional writedowns stemming from the real estate market, with 74 percent predicting the pace would be “more than normal.”
Other red flags cited in the survey included writedowns of non-real-estate assets (for which the predictions are less alarming but still cautionary), the cost of new regulation and the persistence of high unemployment.
And yet, bank executives are generally bullish about the industry’s prospects, with 57 percent agreeing that the sector is more profitable than a year ago and 75 percent saying they expect profitability to be even better a year from now