[R]10:00AM New York-Merrill Lynch (MER: chart) posts $10 billion loss; writes off $14.6 billion in bad debt./R]

Merrill Lynch & Co, the world’s largest brokerage firm, reported fourth quarter net loss of $9.83 billion from a profit of $2.35 billion posted in the year ago quarter.

The loss is the company’s second in a row, and the biggest along with Citigroup’s heavy losses reported earlier in the week.

Merrill Lynch, the latest U.S. bank to reveal losses related to the subprime mortgage market, wrote down $14.6 billion in bad loans.

In the quarter, the brokerage firm reported a loss of $12.01 per share, down from a profit of $2.41 per share posted same period in 2006.

The loss was wider than expected. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial had predicted a quarterly loss of $4.93 per share on revenues of $398.5 million.

Merrill Lynch reported a loss of $8.19 billion in net revenue, compared with net revenue of $8.39 billion in the year-earlier period.

For fiscal 2007, the company posted a loss of $7.8 billion or $9.69 per share from a earnings of $7.59 billion or $7.59 per share.

Revenues declined 67% to $11.3 billion from $33.8 billion a year earlier.

""I don''t think you should anticipate any further problems of this magnitude,"" Merrill Lynch chief executive John Thain said in a conference call Thursday.

""There would have to be something incredibly bad out there to have this happen again, and our whole goal is to get 2007 behind us.""

The new CEO, who replaced Stan O''Neal in December, said: ""While the firm''s performance for the year is clearly unacceptable, over the last few weeks we have substantially strengthened the firm''s liquidity and balance sheet.""

He announced plans to cut some of the bank’s workforce, as well as boosting the risk management division. The company appointed Noel B. Donohoe, as co-chief risk officer Thursday, as part of the new initiatives.

During the quarter, Merrill noted its fixed income, currencies and commodities businesses had significantly reduced client flows and decreased trading opportunities. Revenues from investment banking rose 11% while equity trading revenues gained 23%.

Merrill also significantly reduced its exposure to collateralised debt obligations, or CDOs, that have caused the biggest amount of problems for U.S. banking firms.

At 2007-year end, CDO exposure stood at $4.8 billion from $15.8 billion in the third quarter. For the same periods, exposure to subprime-residential mortgages fell to $2.71 billion from $5.66 billion.

Merrill Lynch shares fell $5.64 or $10.24 to $49.45 at close Thursday. After hours yesterday, the stock was up $0.20 or 0.40% at $49.65. Over the past 52 weeks, the shares have traded between $47.50 and $98.68. Analysts are now targeting a one-year price of $70.20.

Earlier this week, Citigroup and JP Morgan also announced write-downs because of their exposure to the sub-prime loan sector.

JP Morgan Chase said its fourth quarter earnings to December 31 earnings fell 34% to $2.97 billion from $4.53 billion a year earlier.

On Tuesday, Citigroup reported a $9.83 billion net loss for the last three months of 2007 after having to cut the value of its investments by $18.1 billion.