It's Wall Street, Without the Cash

With Only Memories to Trade, Bear Stearns Employees Awaiting Sale to JP Morgan

NEW YORK, May 28 -- What's truly odd about the demise of a Wall Street firm, it turns out, isn't the noise of the implosion but the quiet of the rubble. A post-calamity hush has settled over Bear Stearns's Manhattan headquarters. Traders who haven't left their desks for years take two-hour lunches. The phones rarely ring. A company with 14,000 employees, once known as the scrappy bantam of the financial world, is a zombie in a dark-blue suit.

Thursday, this undead corpse is going to bury itself. Or that's the expectation, anyway. Shareholders are scheduled to vote in New York on the reduced-for-clearance sale of the company to rival and next-door neighbor JP Morgan Chase. The price -- $10 per share -- would have been about as welcome as an obscene gesture last year, when Bear shares traded as high as $171. But in the span of a week in mid-March the firm basically vaporized.

"We knew it was a storm, but we didn't know it was the storm," recalls Fares Noujaim, a Bear Stearns vice chairman.

On Tuesday afternoon Noujaim, who is 44 and dressed in an impeccable pinstriped suit, is standing in his office on the top floor of Bear's headquarters. Movers have just shown up to haul away his furniture, which Noujaim paid for and which he's taking with him, wherever he ends up. All that is left is a killer view, a phone and a two-screen computer monitor on a bare floor.

"There was a TV here, a mirror over there," he says, gesturing around the room. He points to the ceiling. "I put in the recessed lighting."

Obviously, the lights stay, but nearly everything that can be wrapped up and packed at 383 Madison Ave. is on its way out the door, if it hasn't left already.

You think your office is depressing? Try a company where as many as 10,000 employees could soon be laid off. For added grimness, imagine a company that's been taken over by a former enemy. JP Morgan sent in "transition teams" on March 17, the day after the deal was announced. Job interviews have been underway for weeks, though in this case the candidates already have jobs and the interview is to determine whether they can keep them.

To say the least, this has been kind of awkward.

It's as though an opposing army has invaded and is trying to be courteous about finishing off the POWs, says a Bear employee, who, like others interviewed for this story, did not want to be identified for fairly obvious career reasons. "You knew they were going to hold you in prison, and you had to do everything they said. Or else they'd kill you."

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Noujaim presses the elevator button to head down to the fixed-income trading floor, part of a quick tour he has offered to give a reporter. He's trim, intense and, at the moment, pretty distracted. He's about to land a job with a different firm, though he's still conducting Bear business. "I work for this company, and I'll continue to work for it until it's gone," he says.

Everyone else here appears to be socializing in somber groups of two or three. A lot of the offices are empty but for a desk and chair. The atmosphere is what you'd imagine at a Broadway show that's been canceled.