US US corporate profits fell in the final quarter of last year, according to figures from the Commerce Department released on Thursday, as one of the worst banking crises in decades helped bring the economy near to stalling.
Corporate profits fell 3.3 per cent in the final three months of 2007, much more than the 0.1 per cent drop that economists had predicted. The fall in profits – the second quarterly decline in a row at both financial and non-financial companies - was all the more striking because the data did not include the billions of dollars in writedowns and loan loss provisions that companies have taken as a result of the subprime mortgage problems.
