Bear Stearns

The Fall of a Financial Powerhouse

The company was founded in 1923 by Joseph Bear, Robert Stearns, and Harold Mayer as an equity trading house. It serves corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals. The company's business includes corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, institutional equities and fixed income sales, trading and research, private client services, derivatives, foreign exchange and futures sales and trading, asset management and custody services. Through Bear Stearns Securities Corp., it offers global clearing services to broker dealers, prime broker clients and other professional traders, including securities lending. Bear Stearns is also known for one of the most widely read market intelligence pieces on the street, known as the "Early Look at the Market - Bear Stearns Morning View."

Bear Stearns' World Headquarters is located at 383 Madison Avenue, between E. 46th Street and E. 47th Street in Manhattan. The company currently employs more than 15,500 people worldwide. The firm is headquartered in New York City with offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Irvine, San Francisco, San Juan, Whippany, NJ, and St. Louis. Internationally the firm has offices in London, Beijing, Dublin, Hong Kong, Lugano, Milan, São Paulo, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.

Alan "Ace" Greenberg was the chairman of the board for nearly two decades from 1978, and a legendary figure in the Wall Street community. He has become known for his regular quirky memos to the staff, exhorting them to cut costs by conserving energy, re-using paperclips, and fixing broken rubber bands by tying them back together. The memos, published in the book "Memos from the Chairman", are said to have created an "atmosphere of camaraderie and humor during the recession of the early '90s".

From 2005 through 2007, Bear Stearns was recognized as the "Most Admired" securities firm in Fortune’s "America's Most Admired Companies" survey, and second overall in the security firm section. The annual survey is a prestigious ranking of employee talent, quality of management and business innovation. This marks the second time in the past three years that Bear Stearns has achieved this top distinction. However, by mid-March 2008, Bear Stearn's share price reached a ten year low (losing 80% of its stock value) resulting from troubles related to the U.S. subprime mortgage market crisis. This reflected liquidity concerns, which culminated in an announcement of emergency funding from the Federal Reserve and a subsequent buyout by JPMorgan Chase & Co.