Great moments in death throes

Dimon to Pandit: “Stop being such a jerk”

The Wall Street Journal’s three-part mostly-rehash of Bear Stearns’ death throes concludes today, having killed rather more trees and pixels than entirely justified by its contribution to the sum total of knowledge. While it adds specifics—naming Rabobank and ING—to earlier reports that European bankswere among the first to walk away, the series’ new news is mostly in the liberally sprinkled anecdotes:

Late Sunday [Mar. 16] night, as lawyers raced to finalize the merger agreement, executives of the New York Fed convened a call for Wall Street CEOs...During the question-and-answer session, Citigroup Inc’s new CEO, Vikram Pandit, spoke up.

Mr. Pandit—who did not initially identify himself—asked a shrewd but technical question: How would the deal affect the risk to Bear Stearns’s trading partners on certain long-term contracts?

The query irked Mr. Dimon. “Who is this?” he snapped. Mr. Pandit identified himself as “Vikram.”...Mr. Dimon shot back, “Stop being such a jerk.” He added that Citigroup “should thank us” for staving off further mayhem on Wall Street.

Somewhat remarkably, the series barely mentions the massive buying of short-dated (temporarily) far out-of-the-money put options as Bear’s customers abandoned ship, although it scratches one of the usual suspects:

Bear Stearns executives had heard rumors that some of the firm’s big clients—including Citadel Investment Group, a powerful Chicago hedge fund—had made big bets that Bear Stearns’s shares would fall...

Early that [Friday, Mar. 14] afternoon, Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin called Tom Marano, the head of Bear Stearns’s mortgage division, to ask, “Is there anything I can do?”

“There’s such concern that you’re short that I wouldn’t even go there,” Mr Marano said.

“I'm not short,” Mr. Griffin insisted. Any doubters could visit Citadel, he said, and review its trading positions themselves.

Bear Stearns was formally interred this morning, the coroner’s verdict intact: Suicide. Links to the WSJ series after the jump.

Lost Opportunities Haunt Final Days of Bear Stearns [$$]
by Kate Kelly
The Wall Street Journal May 28 2008

SEC Will Scour Bear Trading Data
by Kate Kelly
The Wall Street Journal May 29 2008

Fear, Rumors Touched Off Fatal Run on Bear Stearns [$$]
by Kate Kelly
The Wall Street Journal May 29 2008

Bear Stearns Neared Collapse Twice in Frenzied Last Days [$$]
by Kate Kelly
The Wall Street Journal May 29 2008

Comments

[michael webster]

Yeah, I read the entire piece and kept waiting for the discussion on who, what and where aided and abetted the run.