Bear Sterns CEO Unreachable Playing Golf, Bridge While Hedge Fund Collapse Sparked Credit Crisis

CNN:

Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne was playing bridge and golf and was often out of touch from his embattled Wall Street firm this past summer while its hedge funds collapsed and helped to spark a credit crisis in global financial markets, according to a published report.

The Wall Street Journal reports that during what it described as 10 critical days of the crisis in July, Cayne was playing in a bridge tournament in Nashville, Tenn., without a cell phone or an email device.

Read the whole story: CNN

Comments

[curiousasheck]

Salary $250,000
Bonus $17,070,746
Total Annual Compensation $17,320,746
STOCK OPTIONS*
Restricted Stock Awards $14,838,829
Stock Options 35,788
Exercisable Options 536,007
Exercisable Values $48,539,829
Unexercisable Options 260,946
Unexercisable Values $10,436,087
Total Value of Options $58,975,916
Total Number of Options 796,953
TOTAL COMPENSATION*
Total Annual Cash $17,320,746
Total Short Term Compensation $17,320,746
Other Long Term Compensation $20,993,144
Total Calculated Compensation $38,313,890

Hey the guy doesn't even need to work go figure! WTF Work!

[leftLibertarian]

Sounds like typical CEO behavior.
Anyways, I'd like to try his pot. Must be righteous.

[nomoredead]

I want to play golf with him !

[nomoredead]

I'd like to play golf with him.

[HatingTheGame]

I heard a tellingly funny (but ultimately sad) story the other day. Not sure if its true. I have a friend who works on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software (like Oracle, Peoplesoft, SAP, etc) for HR departments and frequents New York a lot.

He said that his company was brought in to upgrade a bank's HR system, and got a few million dollars to do so. One of the things they had to do is add extra digits to the BONUS field, because the way it was before caused an employee with a high enough bonus to trigger a mistake that caused the person to get double taxed (can you imagine??).

I asked what the problem was. He said that these Wall Streeters were getting $100 million plus bonuses, and the extra '0' caused the system to make the mistake (sort of like a Y2k problem).

So there you have it, these f*ers are making so much money, that even the multimillion software systems can't keep up with them.

Its gonna take a lot of busy beaver Indian or Polish software engineers, making a few thousand rupees a month, to make sure that this mother f*er with his $100m bonus doesn't pay too much taxes.

It would be hillarious if it wasn't so telling of how corrupt to the core our society is.

[BC33]

Does he still get a bonus?

[mrcontinental]

At least he has good cell phone etiquette.

[Justinpassing]

arrogance + obfuscation = incompetence

but arrogance + incompetence = self destruction

[ErnestineBass]

Did James Cayne take a fiddle with him?