Report: Merrill mortgage losses bigger

NEW YORK, Jan. 11 (UPI) -- Merrill Lynch, the U.S. brokerage, has lost about $15 billion in mortgage investments, twice its first estimate reports said.

The company plans to look for an infusion of capital of about $4 billion, some of it from outside the United States, The New York Times said Thursday, citing unnamed sources who have been told of its plans. Merrill Lynch is scheduled to report its earnings next week.

John Thain, the former head of the New York Stock Exchange who became Merrill's chairman and chief executive officer in December, said at a meeting in London that the fourth quarter of 2007 would be a "very bad quarter," sources told the Times. In the third quarter, Merrill took an $8.4 billion write-down.

Merrill is reportedly in discussions with private equity firms in the United States and potential investors in the Middle East and Asia. Sovereign wealth funds, investment funds controlled by national governments, are cash-rich because of high oil prices and have invested in U.S. financial institutions.