Bear Stearns: The curtain falls
In the end, it took only 11 minutes to bring down the curtain on Bear Stearns’ 85-year history, said Kate Kelly in The Wall Street Journal. That’s all the time that was required for shareholders last week to approve the investment bank’s takeover by JPMorgan. In his last act as Bear Stearns’ chairman, James Cayne addressed shareholders and employees gathered at Bear Stearns’ Madison Avenue headquarters as the vote was being tabulated. He apologized for presiding over the firm’s debt-fueled implosion. “I feel an enormous amount of pain, and management feels an enormous amount of pain,” he said. His remarks were met with stony silence.
Outside the building, the scene was “carnival-like,” said Landon Thomas Jr. in The New York Times. Former employees scribbled such comments as “Thank you for nothing” on a large, unflattering portrait of Cayne, who was either golfing or playing bridge during several crucial episodes of the firm’s last days. But despite the “gallows humor,” a sense of resignation prevailed, with “bruised shareholders” generally agreeing that the ignominious takeover of one of Wall Street’s proudest firms “was the best option available.”
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