On Monday, the New York Times’ DealBook cited a report by Investment Dealers’ Digest about Wall Street firms cutting back or canceling their holiday parties. According to the Investment Dealers’ report, a few of the firms whose holidays could be a little less happy include investment banks such as Bank of America, which is cutting back on holiday expenses, and Deutsche Bank, where efforts were made to ban holiday parties in 2006.

The less hearty holiday partying is understandable given the massive write downs by investment banks due to the subprime meltdown. A report by Citgroup Inc’s global market unit says that the total write down of collateralized debt obligations (CDO) could total as much as $64 billion. Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, UBS, Credit Suisse and Barclays all reported massive write downs in the third quarter.

So which Wall Street firms aren’t letting a little subprime mess put a crimp in their holiday style? According to DealBook and Investment Dealers’ Digest, Goldman Sachs, PricewaterhouseCoopers, BNP Paribas, Lehman Brothers and Citgroup have all booked their holiday parties for this year in New York City.

submitted by Christine Birkner