Bear Stearns goes belly up

Battered Wall Street brokerage Bear Stearns said Friday that it is receiving short-term emergency funding to prevent its collapse. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said they would provide Bear Stearns funding for up to 28 days, with the Fed providing the money to JPMorgan through its discount window.
With the credit crisis worsening, the government took action to prevent the investment bank from going under and igniting widespread panic through the financial markets.Bear Stearns (BSC, Fortune 500) shares plunged as much as 53% before moving off their lows to trade 39% lower in the early afternoon.The announcement did not indicate how much funding Bear Stearns would receive, but executives said in a conference call Friday afternoon that with the money, the firm will "have the ability to fund ourselves every day, to do business as usual."
"It's a bridge to a more permanent solution," said Chief Financial Officer Sam Molinaro Jr. During the call, Chief Executive Alan Schwartz said the firm's liquidity crunch hit Thursday, when many customers demanded cash after hearing rumors of trouble at Bear Stearns all week.Bear Stearns had already been working with investment bank Lazard & Co. to explore alternatives when the cash calls came in. The brokerage house decided to secure funding from JPMorgan to give it time to "get some more facts out to the marketplace and give people time to assess them," Schwartz said. The company, which is continuing to work with Lazard, also announced it is moving up the date of its first-quarter earnings release to Monday and provide more information about its current condition. Prior to Friday's announcement, the consensus among analysts was that the New York-based broker would post a profit of $135 million on revenue of $1.35 billion. Executives reiterated that they were comfortable with the range of earnings estimates.Schwartz said the firm's capital position, a measure of its soundness, is in "good shape