Before You Invest Your Money

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has reduced its estimate of global bank losses by $600 billion – but warned the new figure of $3.4 trillion could rise further due to high unemployment rates across the world pushing up loan losses.

Rising security values combined with a new way of calculating losses are to thank for the improvement on the original $4 trillion deficit calculated in April.

But the IMF says that around another $1.5 trillion worth of loan writedowns will hit banks by the end of 2010.