Bear Stearns
American investment company based in New York, New York USA (1923 - 2008)
The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was an American holding company that had investment banking, securities trading, and brokerage firm operations. Its former headquarters were located at the Bear Stearns building in Manhattan, New York City.
Founded in 1923, Bear Stearns grew into the fifth-largest investment bank in the United States and at its peak it was one of the highest-performing brokerage firms on Wall Street. It was led for much of its modern history by Alan "Ace" Greenberg and later CEO James Cayne.
Bear Stearns was affected by the 2007–2008 global financial crisis due to its subprime mortgage exposure, where it was subject to a liquidity run by its customers. It was subsequently merged with JP Morgan Chase. In January 2010, JPMorgan ceased using the Bear Stearns name.
History
Bear Stearns was founded as an equity trading house on May 1, 1923, by Joseph Ainslie Bear, Robert B. Stearns and Harold C. Mayer with $500,000 in capital (equivalent to $9,448,242 in 2025). Internal tensions quickly arose among the three founders resulting in at least one public tussling.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Bear Stearns” as american investment company based in New York, New York USA (1923 - 2008). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as american investment company based in New York, New York USA (1923 - 2008). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q813018. VIAF identifies the subject as 147604903. The Library of Congress control number is nr94015164. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1923, 2007, 2008 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bear Stearns” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.