The Motley Fool Take

How tough is this market for financial companies? Tough enough that Legg Mason (NYSE: LM) posted its first quarterly loss ($255.5 million) in 25 years. Revenue was down, too, off 6.5 percent year over year.

Two key problems killed the quarter: a $382.8 million write-down and a whopping 5 percent decrease in assets under management.

Legg Mason announced a plan to raise $1 billion by offering more stock. In doing so, the company becomes the first fund group to raise public capital in order to shore up losses from the credit crisis.

So let's see what we have here. The asset manager has been forced to write off mas- sive amounts of money resulting from the credit crisis, investors are pulling money out of funds because of lousy performance, and the market environment stinks.

Really, though, it's not all that bad. Legg Mason isn't alone in this mess; its competitors have also suffered. Also, the market won't be slumping forever. Legg Mason is a well-run company that has fallen victim to short-term peculiarities of the environment. The factors that negatively affected this quarter should be less prevalent in coming quarters. Given the stock's roughly 50 percent drop over the past year, the company is looking attractive.