With a monstrous fourth-quarter loss of 6 billion francs, the recession-plagued Swiss bank Credit Suisse posted an 8.2 billion full-year loss on Wednesday, with collective writedowns of 3.2 billion francs on risky assets.

As regards investment banking, the overall amounts for risky assets came down to 11.6 billion francs. The figures were 27 billion francs in 2008 September-end, and 99 billion francs a year before, when the credit crisis marked its beginning.

The dismal loss figures, depicting the biggest ever yearly loss for the banking giant, resulted largely from a pitiable trading activity and restructuring costs.

Though the loss figures fell almost in line with the estimates of Swiss papers, they were worse than those anticipated by analysts polled by Reuters, who projected a fourth-quarter net loss of 4 billion francs, and full-year loss of 6.3 billion francs.

Nonetheless, Credit Suisse, having made its businesses "less susceptible" to the continuing unfavorable market trends, is hopeful about 2009; it has already declared that it had made a "strong start," by being profitable across all divisions this year till now.

In a statement, the bank CEO Brady Dougan said: "While our full-year results are clearly disappointing, we entered 2009 with a very strong capital position, a robust business model, a clear strategy and well-positioned businesses."