Bear employees await their fates
Staffers for Bear Stearns will find out their employment status next week, CNBC reported today.
Staffers for The Bear Stearns Cos. Inc., whose futures have been in doubt since the Wall Street firm was acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co. last month, will find out their employment status next week, CNBC reported today.
Front-office employees at the New York-based financial services firm — traders and investment bankers — are expected to learn their fates around April 15. Back-office staffers will be apprised of their status about a week later, according to CNBC.
Estimates of potential job cuts being made by JPMorgan Chase have been around 7,000, or half of Bear Stearns’ 14,000 employees (InvestmentNews March 17).
In mid-March the Federal Reserve helped broker a deal to have New York-based JPMorgan purchase Bear Stearns for a fire-sale price of $2 per share, or a total of $240 million, after the Wall Street firm neared collapse (InvestmentNews March 17).
The acquisition price was later upped to $10 a share to appease angry Bear Stearns shareholders (InvestmentNews March 24).
JPMorgan has set up an outplacement service to help Bear Stearns employees find other jobs, the CNBC report said.
A JPMorgan spokeswoman confirmed that the firm was going to make decisions on layoffs around the middle of April, but did not give any estimate as to the extent of the cuts.
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