Japanese trading house writes down Samson Investment as shale bet sours

TOKYO (Bloomberg) -- Itochu Corp., Japan’s third-largest trading house, said it booked another writedown on its investment in oil and gas producer Samson Investment Co., as its bet on the U.S. shale boom sours. The latest impairment of 29 billion yen ($279 million) follows charges of about 33 billion yen reported by the Tokyo-based company last year. Itochu has now written down most of the 78 billion yen, worth $1.04 billion at the time, it paid in 2011 for a 25% stake in family-owned Samson.