Credit Suisse Miss

Credit Suisse (CS), the mysterious "Global Bank" that Bill Ackman told regulators has an Open Source Model for valuing subprime mortgage CDOs that's so accurate and powerful it can only run on NASA-style computers, may not be the go-to source for ABS valuation, after all. From Tuesday morning's WSJ ($):

ZURICH -- Swiss bank Credit Suisse Group, until now relatively unscathed by the credit crisis, Tuesday said first-quarter earnings will be reduced by $1 billion from mismarkings and pricing errors by traders which led to the reduction in the value of some asset-backed securities by $2.85 billion.

The news came only a week after the company reported robust fourth-quarter profits largely free of any impact from subprime-credit exposure. The Zurich-based bank said it is reviewing whether the change in value of the securities will impact last year's earnings as well.

"In the first quarter to date, we estimate we remain profitable after giving effect to these reductions," the bank said.

Actually, there's a technical trading term for what happened at CS that may or may not have an analog among its vaunted modellers: Oops!