Here Is The City – Bloomberg reports that CEOs at Wall Street’s top five securities house earned a staggering $3bn between them from 2003 and 2007, during the time when the subprime and toxic securities timebomb was ticking away in the background. Goldman Sachs CEOs were paid the most in this period ($859m), followed by Bear Stearns ($609m).

And talking of Wall Street finest, former Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O’Neal (who bagged $172m in pay between 2003 – 2007), is said to be thinking of making a comeback. According to The Financial Times, O’Neal is considering joining Vision Capital Advisors, a small hedge fund and private equity firm.

Bloomberg also reports that JPMorgan Chase has acquired Washington Mutual’s branch network for $1.9bn, as the thrift was seized in what has been described as the largest bank failure in US history. JPMorgan will not acquire any of WaMu’s liabilities. CEO Jamie Dimon said: ‘This is a fabulous franchise. We think we got this at a price that protects us’.

Read Complete Article

Tags: asyst-technologies-inc, bankruptcy-filing, bear-stearns-companies, board-of-directors, eliot-spitzer, investment-funds, investor-support, journalism, paul-touradji, pergam-finance, raanan-agus, related-companies, security-authorities, tribune-co, woolies

New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Alan Schwartz, former Bear Stearns CEO, has decided to leave JPMorgan and pursue other ventures. 

“With most of the work on the merger integration behind us, Alan will be moving on from the firm at the end of August to pursue other interests,” said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon in a memo distributed internally.

Schwartz, 58, is expected to finish out the month of August at JPMorgan.  The New York Post reported last month that Schwartz was presented several offers including one from private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and others from hedge funds.

“Despite the extremely difficult circumstances that brought our firms together, Alan has been a terrific and constructive partner through the process,” Dimon added in the memo.

Schwartz took the leading role at Bear Stearns, replacing James Cayne.  He was in office only three months before the shocking Federal Reserve-backed buyout that put 14,000 of his employees out of a job.  Some suspected he was reluctant to align himself with JPMorgan after such a large number of his staff was laid off.  Schwartz defended his company’s implosion, blaming the event on false market rumors of a liquidity crunch.

"I am very proud to have been a part of Bear Stearns,” Schwartz stated in the memo. "It was a special place I know many of us will miss.”

While an insider did confirm Schwartz’s exit plan, there is no word yet on what his severance will entail. 

Julie Scuderi
Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net
Email: julie@hedgeco.net

HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
Be sure to check out our sister sites. For more information, visit www.hedgeconetworks.com

Tags: asyst-technologies-inc, bear-stearns-companies, brokerages, computer-screen, due-diligence-service, eliot-spitzer, heidi-miller, merger-integration, mutual-fund, rich-individuals, senior-executives, shareholder-approval, value-investors, yahoo-shareholders

Bloomberg- A year after Andrew Rabinowitz yanked his hedge fund’s cash from Bear Stearns Cos. because of concern the Wall Street firm wouldn’t make good on its trades, he’s ready to return.

For Rabinowitz’s New York-based Marathon Asset Management LLC, the lure is a prime brokerage that’s now part of JPMorgan Chase & Co., whose $1.6 trillion balance sheet is more than four times the size of Bear Stearns’s. JPMorgan Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon is counting on customers like Rabinowitz, some of whom helped bring Bear Stearns to its knees in March, to make his $1.36 billion takeover worthwhile.

After a run on Bear Stearns prompted a bailout by the Federal Reserve and the sale to New York-based JPMorgan, Dimon said one of Bear Stearns’s biggest attractions was its prime brokerage, which provides loans and processes trades for hedge funds. Bear Stearns lost as much as 40 percent of its so-called prime brokerage volume in the month after the March 16 acquisition.

Read Complete Article

Tags: allocations, annals, bad-news, bear-stearns-companies, capital-management-ltd, collapse, dissidents, eliot-spitzer, financial-institutions, fourth-quarter, hotel-address, journalism, lengthy-prison-terms, paul-touradji, qualitative-assessment, remorse, savings-and-loan