Want another more incredible fact? The price of $2 represents just 1.25% of its "pre-subprime" high of $159 in April last year! Take a look at this chart that I got a screen capture of (courtesy of Reuters):
I just feel sorry for Joe Lewis, the UK billionaire investor who amassed close to a 10% holding in Bear after its 2 hedge funds collapsed last year. I remember that some pockets of the City at the time believed that the firm was ripe for a takeover, especially since the Banking sector was going through a consolidation round. I remembered thinking to myself that it may have been worth buying some shares. The speculators were at least correct on 1 point - i.e. that Bear was taken over. What no one expected was the incredible cut-throat price of the deal!
Rumour has it that Joe Lewis divested his holdings on Friday while there was still some value left! I hope that this is true for his sake - otherwise he would have seen about a billion dollars wiped off the face value of his assets! Considering that his net worth is about $2.5 billion, such an amount would indeed represent a very hard sucker punch...
To commemorate this sad farewell to one of Wall Street's venerable institutions, I attach this Youtube clip:
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