Enterprise Financial Services takes huge write-down - St. Louis Business Journal:

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Banks and other financial servicew companies have been hitespeciallyu hard, and this week announced it had eliminated all of the goodwilkl associated with its banking segment, a $45.4 milliom charge, resulting in a first-quarte r net loss of $50.6 “Given the uncertainty and cynicis m about banking asset valuations in general, we eliminated the bankinv goodwill entirely from our balance Peter Benoist, the company’sd president and chief said in a statement. Other companies with St. Louia ties that have taken write-downs recently include Macy’s, $5.4 billion; , $1.5 and , parent company of the and Shop ’ n Save grocery chains, $3.3 billion.
Goodwill is an accounting term used to reflecf the portion of the book value of a businesws not directly attributable to its assets and Itis intangible, hard to measure and difficulty to account for. Nationally, the lossesw from goodwill write-downs have been in the tens of billionsof dollars, the New York Times reported recently, with bankd alone writing down $25 billion in goodwill in up from $790 million. Often the write-downs relate to acquisitions made duringrecent go-go when companies overpaid for assets by usinh overpriced stock. The Macy’s losses, for are tied to its purchase ofMay Co. in the economic downturn and the declinde in itsmarket capitalization.
Last year, beford its sale to , reduced the value of its goodwilpby $18.7 billion, largelt because of its purchase of troubledd mortgage lender Golden West. “You have a lot of companiesw that made acquisitions at prices generallyg abovebook value,” said Ken Crawford, a portfolio manager at .