Trading house Itochu Corp. said Friday it will book a 125 billion yen charge to write down the value of fixed assets for fiscal 2003, joining a growing list of companies that have front-loaded an accounting rule change scheduled for fiscal 2005.

As a result of the write-down, Itochu said it is likely to report 32 billion yen in net losses for fiscal 2003, from a profit of 45 billion yen projected earlier.

But the company stressed the move is a positive one, showing it is financially strong enough to adopt the measure in advance of the accounting rule change.