Former CEO of Bear Stearns, Alan Greenberg, sheds light on his life as one of Wall Street’s most respected figures in this candid and fascinating account of a storied career and its stunning conclusion. On March 16, 2008, Alan Greenberg, former CEO and current chairman of the executive committee of Bear Stearns, found himself in the company’s offices on a Sunday. More remarkable by far than the fact that he was in the office on a Sunday is what he was doing: participating in a meeting of the board of directors to discuss selling the company he had worked decades to build for a fraction of what it had been worth as little as ten days earlier. In less than a week the value of Bear Stearns had diminished by tens of billions of dollars. As Greenberg recalls, "our most unassailable assumption—that Bear Stearns, an independent investment firm with a proud eighty-five-year history, would be in business tomorrow—had been extinguished. . . . What was it, exactly, that had happened, and how, and why?" This book provides answers to those questions from one of Wall Street’s most respected figures, the man most closely identified with Bear Stearns’ decades of success. The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns is Alan Greenberg’s remarkable story of ascending to the top of one of Wall Street’s venerable powerhouse financial institutions. After joining Bear Stearns in 1949, Greenberg rose to become formally head of the firm in 1978. No one knows the history of Bear Stearns as he does; no one participated in more key decisions, right into the company’s final days. Greenberg offers an honest, clear-eyed assessment of how the collapse of the company surprised him and other top executives, and he explains who he thinks was responsible. "Always colorful and provocative, Greenberg lives up to his reputation as a straight shooter. . . . Essential reading for those interested in both Wall Street's ascendance and its recent demise." —Norman Pearlstine, Businessweek Alan C. Greenberg is the former CEO and Chairman of the Board of Bear Stearns. He is currently vice chairman emeritus of JP Morgan Chase. He is the author of Memos from the Chairman. Mark Singer is a staff writer for The New Yorker . He is the author of several books, among them Funny Money and Character Studies. CHAPTER 1 ON MARCH 16, 2008, I WAS AT WORK AT Bear Stearns, but in a distinct departure from my usual routine. For one thing, it was a Sunday, and the last time I had worked weekends was during the 1950s, when the stock market had Saturday trading hours. This particular Sunday was drizzly and gray—fitting weather (actually, a squall with golf-ball-size hail plus an earthquake would have been more like it) for confronting a calamity that even in my gloomiest risk calculations I hadn’t seen coming. Shortly before noon, I went to our headquarters at 383 Madison Avenue for an emergency meeting of the corporate board of directors. The week just ended had been the most maddening, bizarre, and bewildering in our eighty-five-year history. Occasional bad news is inevitable, but I’ve tried to order my life to avoid getting blindsided. Sixty-one years ago I moved to New York and found work as a clerk at Bear Stearns, an investment firm that had 125 employees. Before I turned forty, I was running the place. At its peak, Bear Stearns employed almost 15,000 people. Along the way, my formal titles included chief executive officer, chairman, and chairman of the executive committee; my principal occupation was and continues to be calculating and managing risks. My workday typically started off like this: out the door by 8:00 a.m. and at my desk by 8:15, where my morning reading consisted of the Wall Street Journal—at home I’d already digested the New York Times and the New York Post —and printed reports that specified how various departments that handled the firm’s capital had performed the previous day. If a trader had an especially good day, I’d probably call to congratulate him. If the opposite occurred, I’d want to find out what happened. Before the markets opened at 9:30, I’d usually handled more than a dozen phone calls. As the day progressed, I’d be easy to get hold of but hard to keep on the line. Most phone conversations that last longer than thirty seconds, I find, have reached a point of diminishing returns. I have many interests and hobbies, but making small talk isn’t one of them. Anyone who invests money and neglects to calculate the risks at hand with a cold eye has no business being in our business. Contrary to common belief, securities markets are not casinos, and the last thing I ever want to depend upon is getting lucky. The best risk managers instinctively anticipate the fullest range of plausible outcomes. Maintaining that discipline, I understood early on, was indispensable to long-term success. It would be disingenuous to suggest that making money is not a reasonable way of keeping score. For any financial institutio