Bad News Bear (Bear Stearns nickname)
Bear Stearns is a brokerage firm that was founded in New York City in 1923. In March 2008, the firm’s stock price fell rapidly and negotiations were made to sell the firm. Bear Stearns was widely nicknamed “Bad News Bear,” after the 1976 baseball movie (and its many sequels) The Bad News Bears and the stock market “bear” (symbol of a bad market and the opposite of a stock market “bull”).
“Bad News Bear” is an obvious nickname and wasn’t coined by any one person in particular, although the New York Post and Forbes magazine had both run “Bad News Bear” headlines in 2007.
Wikipedia: Bear Stearns
The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. (NYSE: BSC) is the parent company of Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., one of the largest global investment banks and securities trading and brokerage firms in the world. The main business areas, based on 2006 net revenue distributions, are: capital markets (equities, fixed income, investment banking; just under 80%), wealth management (under 10%) and global clearing services (12%).
On March 16, 2008, under the supervision of the Federal Reserve, the company signed a merger agreement with JP Morgan Chase under which JPMorgan Chase would assume the counterparty risk and exercise management control over Bear Stearns pending shareholder approval. The Federal Reserve issued a non-recourse loan of $30 billion which would cover any losses in Bear Stearns’ investments in mortgage-backed securities and exotic investment paper, with collateral to be managed by BlackRock. One week later, JP Morgan Chase increased the value of its purchase stock swap from $2.00/share to $10.00/share and reduced the loan from the Fed by $1 billion.
Overview
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, Mumbai, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.
Wikipedia: The Bad News Bears
The Bad News Bears is a 1976 film directed by Michael Ritchie. It stars Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal. The film was followed by two sequels, The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training in 1977 and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan in 1978, and a short-lived 1979-80 CBS television series, none of which were able to duplicate the success of the original. Also notable was the score by Jerry Fielding, which is an adaptation of the principal themes of Carmen. The title of the movie has become a popular expression to refer to bad news or the bearer of bad news. As in, “Those are the bad news bears.”
A remake of the movie, directed by Richard Linklater with Billy Bob Thornton taking the role of Morris Buttermaker, was released on July 22, 2005.
New York (NY) Post
BAD NEWS BEAR
MERRILL DITCHES $850M HEDGE FUND STAKE
June 20, 2007—The end came yesterday for a Bear Stearns hedge fund that had been teetering on the edge of solvency for a week, when Merrill Lynch announced that an $850 million auction designed to recoup some of its loans to the fund was back on.
New York (NY) Post
BAD NEWS BEAR
FUNDS NOW WORTHLESS
By PAUL THARP
July 18, 2007—Bear Stearns stock tumbled to wipe out $512 million in just minutes last night after the firm disclosed that two troubled hedge funds it tried to rescue are now worth almost nothing to investors.
The company, with a market value of nearly $20 billion, had already become embarrassed by its bad bets on risky home loans, which thrust two of the firm’s hedge funds into an overnight meltdown last month.
Forbes
Damage Control
Bad News Bear
Liz Moyer, 08.06.07, 4:43 PM ET
It’s a trader credo: You don’t highlight the negative if you don’t have to. So when the chief financial officer of Bear Stearns told analysts the crisis in the debt markets was the worst he’s seen in more than 20 years, people knew they were in trouble.
Rumors swirled around the embattled Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC - news - people ) again Monday, pushing the stock down another 6%, or 30% since the beginning of June.
The Guardian (UK)
Sold for just $2 a share - the bank once worth $25bn
Andrew Clark in New York
The Guardian,
Monday March 17 2008
(...)
Rival investment banks are anxious to disassociate themselves from the plight of Bear Stearns, newly nicknamed “bad news Bear”. But several will reveal problems of their own this week.