Bear Stearns on the operating table

Amid concerns about its future, Financial News studies the anatomy of the troubled US investment bank

Monday 20 August 2007 at 16:00

If Bear Stearns is known outside its US home base, it is because the 83-year-old bank is now virtually synonymous with sub-prime troubles and associated with two disastrous hedge funds that left investors with nothing.

Somehow, Bear Stearns, a workhorse of Wall Street that achieved record profits by sticking to its knitting, has become an example of what happens when securities firms do not diversify sufficiently.