What else was Jimmy Cayne doing as Bear Stearns imploded?

Posted Apr 30th 2009 3:00PM by Zac Bissonnette
Filed under: Law, Scandals

We already know that Jimmy Cayne was (we'll toss in the "allegedly" just to be polite) smoking marijuana, playing bridge, and golfing while Bear Stearns imploded.

But Charlie Gasparino reports that he was also doing something else: "In one of his last acts as CEO of Bear Stearns, James Cayne made a payment of around $2 million to a woman who was poised to file sexual harassment charges against its legendary chairman, Alan "Ace" Greenberg."

The allegations involved "inappropriate touching" by Greenberg, who is 81 years old, although Greenberg told Gasparino that it was "bullshit." However, he declined to comment on whether the allegations were accurate or the payment had been made.

The really touching part of this is that, given all the taxpayer money that was put on the line to make JPMorgan Chase's (NYSE: JPM) acquisition of the company work, taxpayers, by extension, paid for the settlement of a sexual harassment allegation against the 81-year old former chairman of a company that nearly destroyed the economy. So that's pretty cool.

For more on the collapse of Bear Stearns -- and Cayne's detachment from the realities of the company's problems -- check out William Cohan's House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street.

Tags: Ace Greenberg, AceGreenberg, Bear Stearns, BearStearns