Mainland firms bleed heavily in 2008

SHANGHAI: Over a thousand publicly traded firms that had released their full-year or preliminary earnings reports as of yesterday, have posted a 43.61 percent drop in profits, at 173.6 billion yuan, for 2008.

In contrast, these 1,009 companies had posted a 32.18 percent year-on-year increase in profits last year, a report by TX Investment Consulting showed.

Ever since the first annual report was released on January 15, 93 companies have come out with financial results, with 14.3 billion yuan in combined net profit in 2008, up 15.6 percent from 2007.