Subject: Pathetic: JPMorgan and Fed Move to Bail Out Bear Stearns Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:44 pm
Bear Stearns, facing a grave liquidity crisis, reached out to JPMorgan on Friday for a short-term financial lifeline and now faces the prospect of the end of its 85-year run as an independent investment bank.
With the support of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, JPMorgan said in a statement that it had “agreed to provide secured funding to Bear Stearns, as necessary, for an initial period of up to 28 days.”
For the next month, JPMorgan will work with Bear Stearns to reach a solution for its financing crisis. Options could include organizing permanent financing or, according to people briefed on the discussions, buying the bank for a discounted price.
“JPMorgan Chase is working closely with Bear Stearns on securing permanent financing or other alternatives for the company,” JPMorgan said in its statement.
The rescue plan represents a devastating if not ultimately final blow for Bear Stearns, a scrappy and until now resilient investment bank that carved out a niche for itself by mastering the intricacies of the United States mortgage market.
But after two of its hedge funds that specialized in the subprime mortgage market collapsed last summer, Bear’s expertise became its Achilles’ heel as the plummeting market for complex securities tied to subprime mortgages severely damaged its core business.
In recent days, Bear’s stock has plummeted more than 20 percent as investors as well as clients and broker dealers have shied away from the firm, fearing that their continued exposure to plunging real estate assets threatened their solvency.
The announcement on Friday did little to prevent wholesale selling in the firm’s stock, which was down more than 40 percent, to $32.15 a share, shortly after 3 p.m., after falling as low as $26.85, its lowest level in nearly a decade.
On Wednesday, Bear’s chief executive, Alan Schwartz, said in an interview on CNBC that his firm had ample liquidity, but his words have not been enough to prevent what seem to be a classic run on the bank.
In a statement issued on Friday, he said: “Bear Stearns has been the subject of a multitude of market rumors regarding our liquidity. We have tried to confront and dispel these rumors and parse fact from fiction. Nevertheless, amidst this market chatter, our liquidity position in the last 24 hours had significantly deteriorated. We took this important step to restore confidence in us in the marketplace, strengthen our liquidity and allow us to continue normal operations.”
While Bear may have some degree of short-term cash on hand, it is by no means sufficient if all its creditors demand to be paid at once. It has some valuable businesses like its hedge fund servicing and back office unit, as well as aspects of its real estate operations, but in light of the current market conditions it is unlikely to command a high price, especially from JPMorgan, which has said repeatedly that it is not in the market for an investment bank.
In a conference call on Friday, Mr. Schwartz, who just succeeded James E. Cayne as chief executive late last year, struck a frustrated tone as he described the run on Bear’s bank over the last 24 hours, raising the possibility that the firm’s days as an independent bank are numbered. He reiterated that Bear Stearns had started the week with sufficient capital. But four days’ worth of speculation had so rattled customers and lenders that by late Thursday they sought to cash out.
“As we got through the day, we recognized that at the pace things were going, there could be continued liquidity demands that would outstrip our resources,” he said.
Standard & Poor’s confirmed that situation after it cut its long-term credit rating on the company to BBB from A and said more downgrades were likely.
“Bear has been experiencing significant stress in the past week because of concerns regarding its liquidity position,” S.& P. said in a statement. “Although the firm’s liquidity, at the beginning of the week, held steady with excess cash of $18 billion, ongoing pressure and anxiety in the markets resulted in significant cash outflows toward the week’s end, leaving Bear with a significantly deteriorated liquidity position at end of business on Thursday.”
Mr. Schwartz confirmed on the conference call that the firm is working with the investment bank Lazard to consider strategic alternatives, a stock financial phrase that often signifies a potential sale. Though Lazard, Bear Stearns approached JPMorgan about securing a credit facility.
“This is a bridge to a more permanent solution and it will allow us to look at strategic alternative that can run the gamut,” he said. “Investors will be able to see the facts instead of the fiction. We will look for any alternative that serves our customers as well as maximizes shareholder value.”
Subject: A Wall Street Domino Theory Sat Mar 15, 2008 9:57 pm
A Wall Street Domino Theory
The Federal Reserve’s unusual decision to provide emergency assistance to Bear Stearns underscores a long-building concern that one failure could spread across the financial system.
Wall Street firms like Bear Stearns conduct business with many individuals, corporations, financial companies, pension funds and hedge funds. They also do billions of dollars of business with each other every day, borrowing and lending securities at a dizzying pace and fueling the wheels of capitalism.
The sudden collapse of a major player could not only shake client confidence in the entire system, but also make it difficult for sound institutions to conduct business as usual. Hedge funds that rely on Bear to finance their trading and hold their securities would be stranded; investors who wrote financial contracts with Bear would be at risk; markets that depended on Bear to buy and sell securities would screech to a halt, if they were not already halted.
“In a trading firm, trust is everything,” said Richard Sylla, a financial historian at New York University. “The person at the other end of the phone or the trading screen has to believe that you will make good on any deal that you make.”
Commercial banks, mutual fund companies and other big financial firms with deep pockets would presumably weather such turmoil. Firms that traded extensively with Bear Stearns could be at great risk if the bank failed.
For individual customers, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures deposits up to $100,000. Furthermore, when a Wall Street firm fails, the Securities Investor Protection Corporation steps in to take over customer accounts.
The Fed’s action was intended simply to keep the financial markets functioning. Since various trading markets seized up in August, credit conditions have steadily worsened, and interest rate cuts, the main tool central bankers use to bolster the economy, have become less effective.
Policy makers anticipated some of the problems now affecting the financial world. In 2006 and 2007, Timothy F. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, asked major Wall Street institutions to gauge the impact on their portfolios if a large bank failed.
The volume of financial contracts that are not traded on any major exchanges has ballooned in recent years after the bailout of a big hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, in 1998. Now, much of the trading in derivative contracts tied to stocks and bonds takes place in unregulated transactions between financial institutions.Policy makers have been wrestling with questions about when and how they should provide assistance since the last major bailout of a tottering bank, Continental Illinois, in 1984. At the time, Continental was considered too big to fail without sending waves of losses through the financial system.
Regulators are facing an unprecedented and widespread deterioration in many markets. Last summer, the value of risky and exotic securities plummeted in value. Now, even top-rated securities once deemed as safe as Treasuries have hit the skids. Financial firms have written down more than $150 billion of their assets. Some analysts are predicting that losses in various credit markets will reach $600 billion.
Bear Stearns was one of the first firms to experience a direct blow from the subprime mortgage crisis when two of its hedge funds collapsed because of the declining value of mortgage-backed securities.
It is also among the biggest firms in the prime brokerage business, or the financing of hedge funds. In recent weeks, nervous fund managers have scrambled to protect themselves. Robert Sloan, who is the managing partner at S3 Partners, a financing specialist that works with hedge funds, has shifted $25 billion out of Bear Stearns accounts in the last two months, he said.
“The problem is the financing of the hedge fund industry is very concentrated and very brittle,” Mr. Sloan said. “If they go under, you will have thousands of funds frozen out,” he said, adding that everyone might then have to wait for a court to name a receiver before business could resume.
Hedge funds rely on Wall Street for a range of services from the humdrum, like holding their securities, to the critical, like providing loans they use to increase their bets. As Wall Street has buckled under multibillion-dollar write-downs, the firms have cut financing to hedge funds and asked the funds to put up more assets to back their borrowing, forcing managers to sell en masse.
This has caused a series of hedge fund blowups, including Carlyle Capital, an affiliate of the powerful private equity firm Carlyle Group; Peloton Partners, a hedge fund founded by former Goldman Sachs traders; and Drake Capital, a blue-chip fund that has been struggling.
A manager at one hedge fund that uses Bear Stearns as its prime broker said his firm had been nervously watching the situation. The manager, speaking on the condition that he or his fund not be identified, said the fund had lined up backup firms that could clear its trades and keep its portfolio, though as of Friday afternoon it had not left Bear Stearns.
Customer accounts at financial institutions are kept separate from banks’ and dealers’ own holdings to protect those funds if the broker has to seek bankruptcy protection.
But the bigger worry for hedge funds and others that do business with Bear Stearns is whether the firm will be able to honor its trades. Of particular concern are the insurance contracts known as credit default swaps in which one party agrees to guarantee interest and principal payments in case an issuer defaults on its bonds. Investors in such contracts with Bear Stearns are closely studying whether they can get out of them or have them transferred to a more stable firm.
Compounding the problem, some big investment banks this week stopped accepting trades that would expose them to Bear Stearns. Money market funds also reduced their holdings of short-term debt issued by Bear, according to industry officials.
“You get to where people can’t trade with each other,” said James L. Melcher, president of Balestra Capital, a hedge fund based in New York. “If the Fed hadn’t acted this morning and Bear did default on its obligations, then that could have triggered a very widespread panic and potentially a collapse of the financial system.”
Already, investors are considering whether another firm might face financial problems. The price for insuring Lehman Brothers’ debt jumped to $478 per $10,000 in bonds on Friday afternoon, from $385 in the morning, according to Thomson Financial. The cost for Bear debt was up to $830, from $530.
Location : Wasted Space Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
Subject: Re: Pathetic: JPMorgan and Fed Move to Bail Out Bear Stearns Sun Mar 16, 2008 8:25 pm
JPMorgan to buy Bear for $2 a share
NEW YORK - JPMorgan Chase said Sunday it will acquire rival Bear Stearns in a deal valued at $236.2 million — or $2 a share — a stunning collapse for one of the world's largest and most venerable investment banks.
The last-minute buyout was aimed at averting a Bear Stearns bankruptcy and a spreading crisis of confidence in the global financial system.
The Federal Reserve and the U.S. government swiftly approved the all-stock deal, showing the urgency of completing the deal before world markets opened.
Bear Stearns shares close Friday at $30 a share. At their peak, the shares traded at $159.36.
The Fed will provide special financing to JPMorgan Chase for the deal, JPMorgan Chase said. The central bank has agreed to fund up to $30 billion of Bear Stearns' less liquid assets. Risky bets on securities tied to subprime mortgages — loans given to customers with poor credit history — crippled Bear Stearns, the nations' fifth-largest investment bank.
At almost the same time as the deal for control of Bear Stearns was announced, the Federal Reserve said it approved a cut in its lending rate to banks to 3.25 percent from 3.50 percent and created another lending facility for big investment banks. The central bank's official meeting is on Tuesday. Before the emergency move to lower the discount rate, which is the rate at which banks lend each other money, the Fed was widely expected to again cut its headline rate by as much as a full point to 2 percent.
The announcements from both the Fed and JPMorgan come ahead of what some analysts expected to be a brutal day for global stocks. Already, before the announcements, New Zealand's markets opened drastically lower — then began to recover after the deal was unveiled.
"This is going to go down in very historic terms," said Peter Dunay, chief investment strategist for New York-based Meridian Equity Partners. "This is about credit being overextended, and how bad it is for major financial institutions and for individuals. This is why we're probably heading into a recession."
A collapse of Bear Stearns could have created a further crisis of confidence in world financial markets amid a deepening credit crunch. JPMorgan's acquisition of Bear Stearns represents roughly 1 percent of what the investment bank was worth just 16 days ago.
The deal marked a 93.3 percent discount to Bear Stearns' market capitalization as of Friday, and roughly a 98.8 percent discount to its book value as of Feb. 29.
"The past week has been an incredibly difficult time for Bear Stearns," said Bear Stearns Chief Executive Alan Schwartz in a statement. "This represents the best outcome for all of our constituencies based upon the current circumstances."
Wall Street analysts say the bid to rescue Bear Stearns was more than just saving one of the world's largest investments bank — it was a prop for the U.S. economy and the global financial system. An outright collapse could cause huge losses for banks, hedge funds and other investors to which Bear Stearns is connected.
The government, led by the Treasury Department and the Fed, was reported to have closely monitored the talks between JPMorgan and Bear Stearns. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, former chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., "has been in nearly continuous consultations all weekend," said Brookly McLaughlin, a Treasury Department spokeswoman.
After days of denials that it had liquidity problems, Bear was forced into a JPMorgan-led, government-backed bailout on Friday. The arrangement, the first of its kind since the 1930s, resulted in Bear getting a 28-day loan from JPMorgan with the government's guarantee that JPMorgan would not suffer any losses on the deal.
This is not the first time Bear Stearns has earned a place in Wall Street history. A decade ago, Bear Stearns refused to help bail out a hedge fund that was deemed "too big to fail." On Friday, the tables had turned, with the now-struggling investment bank in need of the same kind of aid.
Bear Stearns was founded in 1923 and in recent years was best known for its aggressive investing in mortgage-backed securities — and what was once a cash cow turned into the investment bank's undoing.
In June, two Bear-managed hedge funds worth billions of dollars collapsed. The funds were heavily invested in securities backed by subprime mortgages. Until that point, subprime mortgage-backed securities were immensely popular with investors because of their profitability.
The funds' collapse and subsequent problems in the credit markets called into question Bear Stearns' ability to manage its own risk and the leadership ability of then-Chief Executive James Cayne. Critics of the company said Cayne spent too much time away from the office last year playing golf and bridge as the problems unfolded.
Cayne is the same executive who refused to let Bear Stearns provide support as part of a Federal Reserve-led plan to rescue Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. His reticence was said to deeply anger some of his fellow Wall Street CEOs, and the episode came up every time Bear was reported to be in trouble in recent months.
Cayne took over from the legendary Alan "Ace" Greenberg in 1993. Greenberg joined Bear Stearns as a clerk, working his way up through the ranks to eventually take over as CEO in 1978. Greenberg was known for his irreverent style, and his regular memos to employees were turned into a book called "Memos from the Chairman."
Before Greenberg's ascendancy to CEO, Bear Stearns began to expand from its New York roots throughout the 1950s and 1960s, opening international offices and expanding its U.S. operations.
The company was opened in 1923 as an equity trading shop. Today, it has subsidiaries providing a wide array of financial services products for individuals, corporations, institutions and governments. Generally, it provides capital markets, wealth management and global clearing services to its customers.
Subject: Re: Pathetic: JPMorgan and Fed Move to Bail Out Bear Stearns Mon Mar 17, 2008 8:03 pm
Bear Sterns' Co-President and Co-COO ...
This past week was sort of a confirmation of my 'visions" of the future and was further topped off today with news that JP Morgan has agreed to purchase venerable American financial institution for two dollars per share, $28 or 93% lower than BSC's closing price on Friday, in an effort to bail out the collapsing company.
The "penny stockification" and acquisition of Bear is not the only news. In an unprecedented move, the Federal Reserve has also agreed to guarantee up to thirty billion of Bear's most illiquid assets.
We are now entering a brave new world where the U.S. government, through the Federal Reserve, is willing to underwrite risk in an effort to stabilize the collapsing credit markets.
Subject: Pathetic: JPMorgan and Fed Move to Bail Out Bear Stearns 
Fri Mar 14, 2008 6:44 pm
