Foster's faces $700m write-down

Last August, Foster's wrote down the value of its intangible wine assets by $471 million and reallocated $575 million of goodwill from the $3.2 billion acquisition of wine group Southcorp in 2005 to its beer division.

But Goldman Sachs JBWere analyst Ian Abbott has warned that Foster's still holds a total of $2.2 billion of wine-related intangible assets on its balance sheet and could be set to announce further write-downs of up to $700million.

"Given that the global economy has deteriorated in the six months since the previous review of carrying values, we believe there is a risk of further write-downs," Mr Abbott wrote in a report to clients.

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