As Bear Stearns melted down, many hedge fund clients hedged their bets by arranging relationships with other prime brokers and, perhaps, pulling some funds. You can bet the marketing guys at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are working the situation hard. The issue for JP Morgan Chase is whether it will be able to maintain Bear's prime broker at the leading edge? Or will defections sink the operation before it gets re-branded. That would be a shame, as Bear Stearns was recently ranked third among prime brokers globally, according to a new survey as reported by the Financial Times. JP Morgan Chase has a lot of work to do.
For more:
- here's the Financial Times article
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