Bear Stearns (fka BSC)

[makesumgravy]

The stock was $170.00 this time last year. My understanding that if someone would have wanted to bid this up to take it over, it would have occurred last Thurs even up the time prior to JPM was to get it, and nobody wanted it........so who knows. But this sounds like Enron......guess these people knew nothing?. But the timing was just perfect.

Bear execs sold some stock in December
Cayne, Schwartz still big shareholders of beleaguered investment bank
By Alistair Barr & Dan Gallagher, MarketWatch
Last update: 3:02 p.m. EDT March 21, 2008Print E-mail RSS Disable Live Quotes
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) - Bear Stearns executives sold stock in the firm worth more than $20 million in December, although they remain big shareholders in the beleaguered broker, according to Thomson Financial data.
James Cayne, chairman of Bear (BSC:The Bear Stearns Companies Inc
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BSC 5.96, +0.63, +11.8%) , sold 172,621 shares in December worth $15.4 million, while President Alan Schwartz sold 67,900 shares worth just over $6 million, Thomson data show.

Alan Greenberg, chairman of Bear's executive committee, sold 99,293 shares worth $8.8 million in December,

while Chief Executive Officer Samuel Molinaro sold 27,726 shares worth almost $2.5 million, according to Thomson.

Insiders at Bear sold a total of 715,000 shares last year worth more than $75 million, up from 2006 but down considerably from 2004, when sales of more than 1.5 million shares worth $147.9 million took place, the data show.

Since 2000, Cayne has sold 2.37 million shares worth about $182.7 million,

while Schwartz has sold more than one million shares for roughly $67.2 million.

Bear almost collapsed last week and had to be bailed out by J.P. Morgan Chase (JPM:JPMorgan Chase & Co

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JPM 45.97, +3.50, +8.2%) and the Federal Reserve. J.P. Morgan offered to buy the broker for $2 a share, a huge discount to where the stock was trading just a week before.
The near-collapse has been a disaster for some staff. Executives and other employees at Bear own at least a quarter of the shares. See related story.
Wilmington Trust, which holds stock on behalf of executives and other employees, owns 23% of the firm's shares, Thomson data show. Some of those shares were awards as part of incentive plans.
One of those plans - a long-term one called the Capital Accumulation Plan - awarded restricted stock to senior managing directors of Bear. When those shares vested, executives usually sold and they did that in December 2007, according to InsiderScore, a Web site that tracks insider transactions.
Despite selling in December, Bear executives are still major shareholders of Bear. Cayne owns almost 5% of the firm and Schwartz owns almost 1%, according to Thomson data.
Alistair Barr is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco.
Dan Gallagher is MarketWatch's technology editor, based in San Francisco