China’s CITIC Securities Co. is to cancel a deal to buy into Bear Stearns after news that the fifth largest investment bank in the United States is to be bought out by JPMorgan Chase & Co.in a bid to save the troubled lender.

“We will not carry out the deal — the situation has changed,” Tuesday’s China Daily news quoted CITIC Group chairman Kong Dan assaying. JPMorgan Chase & Co. ‘s agreement to buy Bear Stearns for 236.2 million U.S. dollars represents a stunning collapse for one of the world’s largest investment houses. The newspaper also reported that CITIC Securities, the country’s largest securities firm in term of market value, had also scrapped plans for a joint venture in Hong Kong with Bear Stearns.

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Post tags: Bears Stearns, CITIC, JPMorgan Chase, oversea investment
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While the situation at Bear Stearns was deteriorating this past week, Donald Tang, its Los Angeles-based vice-chairman, was in Beijing, trying desperately to get Chinese regulators to approve the ailing investment bank’s tie-up with Citic Securities – a deal that Mr Tang had been pursuing for two years.

When the talks began in March 2005, the deal was seen as a share exchange between an established Wall Street powerhouse and a young Chinese firm. By last autumn, though, Bear had become the weaker of the two, and the Chinese brokerage’s market value was much bigger.

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Post tags: Bears Stearns, citic securities, debt crisis
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Jimmy Cayne, the chief executive of Bear Stearns , is planning to travel to China in the next few weeks amid speculation about a possible joint venture with Citic, the state-owned financial conglomerate. News of the plan comes as Mr Cayne seeks to head off a crisis of confidence in the bank whose co-president, Warren Spector, was ousted on Sunday.

Bear has sent letters to clients reassuring them it has “ample liquidity” to support its businesses in spite of the fallout from the collapse of two mortgage hedge funds it managed. One senior Wall Street banker said Bear might need to line up new long-term funding to calm counter-parties and lenders. “A strategic stake by a partner with deep pockets would be even better,” he said. [Full Text]

© Kate Zhao for China Digital Times (CDT), 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bears Stearns, overheating, Venture Capital
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