Wall Street is bracing itself for the worst with the start of the latest round of banking results as the continuing decline in the housing market shows no sign of abating.

Citigroup, Wall Street’s biggest victim in the housing crisis, with more than $45 billion (£22.5 billion) of credit-crunch related losses so far, is expected to suffer the biggest loss on sub-prime investments in the second quarter — of about $9 billion, according to Goldman Sachs. This would leave America’s biggest financial services group with a $0.58-a-share loss — a significant decline on the $1.24-a-share profit posted in the same period last year. Revenues are forecast to have fallen from $26.63 billion last year to $17.72 billion in this year’s second quarter. Citigroup reports on Friday.

Gary Crittenden, chief executive of Citigroup, which has lost about $180 billion of its market value in the past 18 months, gave warning last month that his bank would take "substantial additional marks on our sub-prime exposure" if current trends continue. He also predicted that Citigroup would continue to suffer losses on its exposure to loans made to back private equity buyouts and on bond insurance and said the bank would need to keep raising capital reserves to cover bad loans, which he said "could have a meaningful impact on our results for the remainder of the year".

Merrill Lynch, which has suffered more than $30 billion of losses relating to investments in sub-prime mortgages in the past nine months, is expected to suffer a further $6 billion of writedowns when it announces its second-quarter results on Thursday. The quarter's writedown from the credit crunch would leave the group with a loss of $1.91 a share, down from a $2.24-a-share profit last year, as revenues tumble by about a third to $3.27 billion, according to analysts' consensus estimates. Merrill has lost about $60 billion of its market value in the past 18 months.

On the same day, JPMorgan Chase is forecast to announce that second-half profits tumbled to barely a third of last year’s, from $1.20 a share to $0.47 this year. Revenue is forecast to have fallen from $18.91 billion to about $16.64 billion over the same period.

Wells Fargo is forecast on Wednesday to report a small decline in its fortunes for the past year, falling from a $0.67-a-share profit in the second quarter of 2007, to a $0.50-a-share profit for the same period in 2008.

Bank of America is expected to announce next Monday that it made a second-quarter profit of $0.57 a share on $18.46 billion of revenues, compared with a $1.28-a-share profit on $19.56 billion of sales last year.

The following day, Wachovia is forecast to report second-quarter profits of $0.02 a share on $8.51 billion of revenues. Last time, it reported a $1.23-a-share profit on $8.69 billion of revenues.

The same day, Washington Mutual is expected to report that its second-quarter results fell from a $0.92-a-share profit last time to a $0.93 loss this year.

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