One big Bear Stearns (BSC) shareholder is no longer hallucinating about a higher JP Morgan (JPM) bid for the firm: Chairman Jimmy Cayne, a Wall Street and Bear Stearns legend and one of the few men most responsible for Bear's collapse (the others being CEO Alan Schwartz and the firm's financial and risk-management teams), has taken his loss.
The NYT's Landon Thomas Jr. has the story:
Only a year ago James E. Cayne's stake in Bear Stearns was worth more than $1 billion. But on Thursday, Mr. Cayne, the chairman of Bear, disclosed that he had sold all of his shares in the troubled investment bank this week for just $61 million.
While the sale leaves Mr. Cayne a wealthy man, it nonetheless underscores the deep losses suffered by Bear's shareholders after the company's forced sale to JPMorgan Chase two weeks ago.And for Mr. Cayne, the liquidation evokes a deep sense of loss. It represents a humiliating capitulation for a brash executive who, with his ever-present cigar, suspender-snapping ways and Friday golf outings in the summer, epitomized the classic, if outdated, picture of the Wall Street chieftain.
Landon also paints a picture of how a 74-year old legend who spent all of his working days since 1969 at Bear is dealing with the fact that, in the space of 72 hours, 90% of it went "poof":
People who have spoken with Mr. Cayne say that he, like everyone at Bear, was stunned by the firm's precipitous collapse and the rock-bottom price of its sale. In the past weeks, together with his wife, Patricia Cayne, who is a student of Jewish religious traditions, Mr. Cayne has spent considerable time searching for comparable events in religious history to see what lessons can be learned from the collapse of his firm, said a person who has spoken to him recently.
Hats off to Jimmy: If I were in his shoes, I'd probably turn to something a good deal stronger than religion. And there's also a silver lining. If Jimmy does manage to find "comparable events in religious history" that shed light on Bear's demise, he will be able to contemplate them from his new $26 million apartment in the Plaza.
More on Bear Stearns: Did Bear CEO Alan Schwartz Lie About the Firm's Condition on CNBC?
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If everyone pulled their money from pension funds and put it local banks, took a lesser rate of return, this country would boom. Local banks could deploy it locally, instead of Wall Street using the money to force companies overseas for higher returns.
Pension funds work basically like federal income taxes, they take the money in and deploy it the way they want. Bush to his cronies, Wall Street to funds managers and CEOs.
Want to stop wall street, stop sending them money.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qepv1mtYdx0
Without knowing Jimmy the C's initial pot that he brought to the game, I am not sure I can agree on the amount of his loss, or his gain, or anything else.
What may be more telling is that we cover the story as if the answer is actually in there somewhere - you know, the religious answer. Wha' 'appen , God?
Jimmy, this was not a religious enterprise.
This was business.
Me thinks you better be looking carefully at the financial "services" structure that y'all created, and at those "smart" high-return investment holdings, inflated by some risky mortgages that eventually dwarfed the fewer sound mortgages in the portfolio.
Risky Business.
Does the word brittle mean anything to you?
Brittle little structure there, wasn't it.
At least for the smaller frys among the cabal that is too big to fail.
Damn.
Shoulda bought out a few more competitors while the getting was good.
So, Jimmy, if you want to go looking for things like causes, get serious and admit its all in the mirror and the Boardroom.
You'r gonna need some really serious reparation to get any salvation after this.
this man and all his paper & physical Assest are collateral for what We were Conned out of, It is at the Very least those samller investors Money. he should be homeless and living hand to mouth.
in fact if a disbled woma Owes Walmart and additonal 58, 0000. then this asshole and his family should be at least 40 Mill in debt too! you gambled You lost - Pay UP!
These people live in a different dimension.
Thousands of people losing everything and this thing is asking its wife why it is being persecuted.
Perhaps Mr. Cayne ought to be reading 20th century German history and then hope that things don't turn out that way in the US. Maybe he ought to sell hi co-op at the Plaza while there is still a market for it and assume a much lower profile. What happened in Detroit in1967 cannot be ruled out for New York.
Bernacke could have bailed out Bear for one-tenth as much. He is spending $30-100 billion at the top of a leveraged financial pyramid. It is cheaper to fix the problem at the bottom. Most of the public do not understand what "leveraged" means. It is like buying commodities on margin.
How do these people get to be such important figures in the business world when they don't appear to have an iota of common sense?
This is criminal negligence to screw the stockholders like they did,,, another fu--ing ENRON and don't you republicans forget it....
I gotta say, as the chairman of the board, shouldn't he have KNOWN that this was happening????
Not like $61,000,000 is anything to sneeze at - especially since I suspect that was far from his only sets of assets.
Boo-friggin' hoo?