American financial giant Merrill Lynch & Co has posted a loss of $9.8 billion in the fourth quarter of the fiscal year 2007, following a $11.5 billion writeoff related to home-loan defaults.

It had posted a profit of $2.35 billion in the same quarter in 2006. The bank's revenues in this quarter too slipped to $8.19 billion.

The huge loss at Merrill follows Citigroup Inc's write-off of $18 billion against sub-prime exposure. Citigroup, on Tuesday, had reported the biggest loss of almost $10 billion in its 196-year history.