The usual midtown haunts of Bear Stearns “worker bees” are a little haunted these days. It’s easier to get a pint of Guinness during happy hour at Maggie’s Place, but Fiona and Nick seem a little lonelier. It seems the collapse of Bear has depressed not only Jimmy Cayne’s net worth but the libational spirits of his underlings as well.
Spencer Morgan of the New York Observer infiltrated Connolly’s, the forty-seventh street Irish bar that plays home to Black 47 on Saturday nights and once hosted a lot of Bear Stearns regulars.
“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.
“Bear! Bear! Bear!” they chanted as they downed their shots, recalled the young man. “Everyone was trying to keep hope alive.”
“They’re coming less, these last weeks,” said the compact bartender in an Irish brogue Monday night, when the Bear stock was being valued at between $4 and $10, depending on the appetite of JPMorgan. The figure was being displayed on several flat screens tuned in to CNBC’s Kudlow & Company. “I think a lot of them are nervous now. It’s a sad thing; a lot of them are older guys with retirement plans, and now this, you know?”
Bear Naked Gentlemen [Observer]
Put me in the category of “who gives a shit”. Ask the guys who were at LTCM about all the “sympathies” Bear sent them when their cookie crumbled in 98. Attention dufus BSC people: Karma is a bitch!
JC nice to see you struggle into work after a long night of investigative journalism.
In your absence EP and BL have been on fire!
Bess mentioned the “H” word in what could have been construed as making fun of the H******* (when actually she was just continuing a fine DB tradition of making fun of the dope (pun intended) aka jimmy cayne) and this shitshow started.
Maybe those fired BSC employees should rent ‘Cocktail’ this weekend? How about some Coughlin’s laws to cheer them up:
Bury the dead, they stink up the place.
Anything else is always something better.
Just remember, keep trying and trying to get hired like Brian Flanagan. And if it doesn’t work out (and it probably won’t because if you were smart and had talent you’d be self-employed or still employed), there’s always TGI Friday’s! Just remember – no more than 10 items of flair.
@2:59
you forgot to remind the future TGI fridays personnal that they also have to be careful about who they show thier “O” face to.
um, carney nice creative journalism–this is losely based on the truth… carney heard the basic facts abt march 14, but a lot of my friends were there, and no one mentioned any chanting…or anything of the sort…pppl are still going out,,,glad you ventured all the way over to 47th street and had some drinks to find out this gem of a story
Uhm, read the post more carefully. I wasn’t there at all. Spencer Morgan of the New York Observer went by a few days later and got the story.
Black 47 playing for a bunch of Bear Stearns employees? What’s next, Rage Against the Machine playing the innaugural for Felipe Calderon? Maybe O.A.R. doing a fundraiser for Rick Santorum? Sell-outs.