Bear Stearns CEO to step down
James Cayne, who's come under attack for mismanaging the bank's investment in subprime mortgages, will give up his CEO title to investment banker Alan Schwartz.
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| Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne could relinquish his CEO title as early as Tuesday. |
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The pending management shift at Bear Stearns, where chief executive James Cayne plans on relinquishing his duties, handing over the CEO reins to investment banker Alan Schwartz, ushers in a new era for the struggling bank. The primo dealmaker is likely to try to broaden the company's business beyond its reliance on the bond market.
Bear Stearns spokesman Russell Sherman confirmed Tuesday that Cayne will soon present his plans to step down to the company's board of directors. He declined to say when the board will meet to accept or reject Cayne's plan, but did not dispute news reports that it might be as early as Tuesday afternoon.
Cayne's passing of the torch comes several months after two highly-leveraged Bear Stearns funds collapsed, triggering a credit crisis that has roiled the markets ever since. Cayne has been blamed for failing to contain the damage at Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500).
It's not known when Cayne, 73, will officially step down. He's proposing to remain with the firm as chairman, sources told Fortune.
A senior Bear Stearns executive, who discussed the move briefly with Cayne on Monday, described the nearly 40-year veteran of the bank as "upbeat." Other Bear Stearns executives said that Cayne spent Monday calling colleagues with news of his plan and emphasized the "voluntary nature" of his action. It's unlikely Bear Stearns could have forced Cayne out anytime soon: He owns nearly five percent of the firm's stock.
Nonetheless, the heat was clearly rising on Bear Stearns' board to take more forceful action in the wake of the the bank's ongoing troubles. Bear Stearns in December reported a fourth-quarter loss of $854 million, its first loss ever.
Other Wall Street boards have responded to the credit crunch - and perceptions that widespread lax management contributed to it - by ousting their chiefs. Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500) replaced its CEO, Stanley O'Neal, after taking multibillion writedowns on some of its investments. Similarly, Citigroup's (C, Fortune 500) chief executive, Charles Prince, lost his job in November after the financial services giant announced as much as $11 billion in charges.
Cayne has a famously de-centralized management style, one that landed him in trouble last summer when he kept an appointment to play in a multi-day bridge tournament while the two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed.
More importantly, Private Capital Management's Bruce Sherman, a respected value investor who owns 6.43 million Bear Stearns shares, had begun to make his concerns over the bank's leadership very clear to its board, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the management changes late Monday.
For Bear Stearns, the likely ascendancy of Alan Schwartz to the chief executive slot is more than a case of giving the job to the most qualified candidate; it represents a sea change in the company's vaunted culture. Founded and run exclusively by and for its traders, Bear Stearns' efforts at corporate finance, merchant banking and advisory work - three separate businesses grouped under "investment banking" - have always been modest relative to its peers.
Schwartz, a 57 year-old dealmaker respected for his collegial demeanor, has little experience with Bear Stearns' core fixed-income franchise and virtually none with its other key business lines, back-office clearance and prime brokerage.
He is, however, as one colleague described him, "a helluva dealmaker." This is important because Bear Stearns is perpetually bandied about as a takeover target for a larger bank seeking an instant footprint on Wall Street. The rumors are certain to increase given the continued weakness in Bear Stearns' stock price, which has declined 54 percent in the last year.
In October, Bear Stearns received a $1 billion investment from an investment bank controlled by the Chinese government. To shore up their balance sheets, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500), Citigroup, and UBS (UBS) also received investments from so-called sovereign wealth funds last year. 
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