The Bear Stearns man, the lifer, the one they would have put on the cover of their recruiting pamphlet if they had one—Bear Stearns wants you!—he’s a self-made man. Daddy didn’t put him through Harvard Business School, and if he did, you better keep that to yourself.

Ace Greenberg—the man who put Bear on the map and defined the archetype, Missouri-educated on a football scholarship, started as a clerk, kept his nose to the grindstone, became the CEO—Ace isn’t interested in your business degree. “I want them to have a PSD degree,” he said. “A poor, smart, and deep desire to be rich degree.  read more »

The fiery death of New York real estate will look something like this: Bear Stearns executives will renege on the Upper East Side apartment contracts they signed before their firm’s collapse; finance guys at other firms, saddled with another round of nonsteroidal bonuses, will keep downsizing; foreign investors will get panicky and back out of Manhattan; Bloomberg will blubber; brokers will bawl.  read more »

Connolly’s Bar and Restaurant on 47th between 5th and Madison avenues is the official home of Black 47, a politically charged Irish rock band, whose name is derived from the worst year of the Great Irish Famine, 1847. They play every Saturday night. During the week, the bar is the de facto Bear Stearns after-work hangout: Some 6,000 employees of the fallen bank work in the $1.5 billion, 45-story, granite-and-glass octagonal tower around the corner.

“On an average night there would be between 20 and 30 Bear guys,” said a 23-year-old Bear man we’ll call Tommy. He works on the investment banking side and has been a Connolly’s regular since he started at Bear a year ago. He said that on Friday, March 14, when it was pretty clear that the bank was heading south, and fast, more than 100 Bear employees, mostly men, gathered among the mahogany, rich leather and lighted green clover leaves of the bar.  read more »

With 1.6 million square feet of office space in Manhattan, Bear Stearns is not a titan in the real estate industry, but industry professionals are watching close as the bank’s collapse could send ripples through the commercial market.  read more »