Bear Stearns Co

Bear Stearns Settles Suit Against Proxy Solicitor: Bear Stearns & Co. settled a lawsuit against a leading shareholder proxy solicitor that the investment firm contended had stolen confidential information about its clients. As part of the agreement, the proxy solicitor, D. F. King & Co., said it fired an employee who had been suspended in connection with the allegations. Further details were not disclosed. The lawsuit, filed late last month in New York State Supreme Court, alleged that D. F.

Attempts to place blame for the great financial crisis that sent the economy into a nose dive last year have made household names of top executives such as Angelo R. Mozilo, Richard Fuld and Maurice "Hank" Greenberg. But the only major criminal case to emerge thus far from the global cataclysm involves two lesser-known hedge fund managers who will be thrust into the spotlight today when their trial begins with jury selection in a Brooklyn courtroom. Federal prosecutors allege that former Bear Stearns Cos. fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin -- in a frantic, eventually unsuccessful scramble in mid-2007 to keep their mortgage bond funds from collapsing -- misled investors about the deepening woes in the portfolios.

2 More Bear Stearns Execs Resign: Bear Stearns & Co. senior managing directors Jonathan Ilany and Peter M. Drittel resigned, raising to six the number of senior executives who left the firm since May, Bear Stearns employees said. Ilany, 42, who headed the company's commercial mortgage-backed bond activities, is the fifth member of the board of directors to resign in four months. Drittel was co-head of the firm's emerging markets activities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission failed in oversight of Bear Stearns Cos. because the regulator knew the investment bank had "high leverage" and was too concentrated in mortgage securities before its forced sale to JPMorgan Chase & Co., the agency's inspector general said. "It is undisputable that" the SEC "failed to carry out its oversight of Bear Stearns," Inspector General David Kotz said in a report. SEC staff was aware of "numerous, potential red flags" but "did not take actions to limit these risk factors," he said.

Lawrence A. Kudlow resigned Thursday as chief economist of the Wall Street investment firm Bear Stearns & Co., saying he would take a position as economics editor of National Review magazine. Kudlow, 46, who often writes and speaks on political and economic issues, said he has also been encouraged to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), whose term expires this year.

It's been a beary good Christmas for Samson, the 600-pound California black bear who garnered fame for splashing in a hot tub and swiping avocados after he wandered into a Monrovia neighborhood two summers ago. The Orange County Zoological Society, which is building Samson a new home, received a $10,000 donation toward construction from, um, Bear, Stearns & Co., a New York brokerage with offices in Los Angeles.

Beverly Hills billionaire H. Roger Wang has accused Bear Stearns Cos. of duping him and his wife into buying 150,000 shares of the struggling brokerage's stock -- including 100,000 shares on March 14, the day that federal officials first intervened to keep the firm from tumbling into bankruptcy. The lawsuit is one of many legal actions spawned by the near-collapse of the venerable Wall Street firm. Wang, who operates high-end retail stores in China, is seeking $10 million in damages.

J.C. Flowers & Co. offered to pay $3 billion for a 90% equity stake in Bear Stearns Cos. one day before JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy the securities firm for about $240 million. The March 15 proposal from Flowers, the private equity firm founded by former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker J. Christopher Flowers, fell apart the next day when his company failed to get bank financing and Federal Reserve backing, according a regulatory filing from JPMorgan on Friday.

Bear Stearns Cos. shareholders may hope that another suitor will emerge to challenge JPMorgan Chase & Co., but their best hope may be prying a few extra dollars from JPMorgan. Billionaire investor Joseph Lewis, who owns about 8% of Bear's shares, said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that he was prepared to "take whatever action . . . necessary and appropriate to protect the value" of his stake in the company. Such moves could include talking to Bear Stearns or other parties about options for the investment bank, the filing says.

The Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps Sunday to bolster investors' shaken confidence, opening a lending window to securities firms, slicing a key interest rate and backing with $30 billion in emergency funds the bargain-basement purchase of ailing Bear Stearns Cos. by rival JPMorgan Chase & Co.

The battered global financial system looked a lot more fragile Friday as one of Wall Street's biggest investment houses was forced to get an emergency loan from the Federal Reserve, raising the specter of more giant securities firms laid low by the global credit crisis. Bear Stearns Cos. said its ability to finance its operations had "significantly deteriorated" in the preceding 24 hours, compelling it to borrow an undisclosed amount of money from the Fed.

Throughout Wall Street's history, major financial system upheavals often have culminated with the spectacular failure of a marquee name. That was the case in December 1994, when Orange County filed for bankruptcy protection after getting caught on the wrong side of a sharp jump in interest rates. In September 1998, the Federal Reserve helped arrange a bailout of the giant investment fund Long-Term Capital Management after it neared collapse from bad bets in wildly swinging markets.

Brokerage Bear Stearns Cos. confirmed Tuesday that longtime Chief Executive James "Jimmy" Cayne had stepped down, marking the third CEO departure from a major investment bank since the sub-prime mortgage crisis began to hammer Wall Street last spring. Cayne, whose exit had been rumored on Monday, handed the company's reins to its president, Alan Schwartz, as expected.

Bear Stearns Cos. posted a much bigger-than-expected quarterly loss Thursday, the first net loss in the Wall Street firm's history, capping a fiscal year in which the investment bank took a beating on bad bets on sub-prime mortgages. The company's top executives will get no year-end bonuses in the wake of the "unacceptable results," Chief Executive James "Jimmy" Cayne said in a statement.