The Bear Stearns name may live on through memorabilia sold on eBay. Starting next month, it won’t be on a business card.
The Bear Stearns Private Client Services division, the last to use the name of the failed firm, was changing to JPMorgan Securities, spokesman Darin Oduyoye said. The move was announced to brokers on Friday on a conference call. Clients will see the new logo on their February statements.
JPMorgan, which acquired the unit in its March 2008 purchase of Bear Stearns Cos, kept the name and branded it “Bear Stearns: a JPMorgan Company.” Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, the son and grandson of stockbrokers, said on October 27 that his New York-based bank planned to have as many as 1,000 of the “top, top, top” brokers.
JPMorgan hired 70 new brokers in 2009, bringing the total to 386 who managed more than $60 billion in client assets, Oduyoye said.
The commission-based pay structure will remain unchanged. The unit had 324 brokers at the end of 2008, company documents show.
One of the new hires was CEO Dimon’s father Theodore “Ted” Dimon, who joined the firm in November from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The elder Dimon spent more than three decades as a broker for companies once run by Sanford “Sandy” Weill before moving to Merrill Lynch in August 2006, according to a report from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
The Bear Stearns brokers earned $307 million in revenue for the year through September 30, a company report shows. Barry Sommers runs the division, which will remain separate from JPMorgan’s private bank, whose clients are typically worth more than $25 million.
Samuel Molinaro, former chief financial officer of Bear Stearns, is helping a former client Braver Stern Securities Corp negotiate the purchase of New York-based broker-dealer Pali Capital Inc, three people familiar with the talks said yesterday. Molinaro will oversee about 250 people at the combined firm as chief executive officer.