Cfo Thought Leader

Rick Rosenthal had been working as an investment analyst at Bear Stearns for some 3 years when the bank became a casualty of the subprime mortgage crisis.He remembers sitting in front of his Bloomberg terminal in March 2008 and watching a news conference at which a Wall Street expert was assuring viewers that Bear Stearns was a solid company—just as the bank’s stock began to plummet.  In a deal reached a few days later, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay a mere $2 a share to buy all of Bear.“While our fund had been performing well, JPMorgan had its own, so the question became, ‘What is going to happen to our fund?,’” recalls Rosenthal, who became part of a team of Bear veterans who ultimately were spun out by JPMorgan to manage the fund independently.Reports Rosenthal: “Relative to traditional asset management funds, we actually performed pretty well, but I did come to understand much more clearly how integrated the financial system is into the greater economy.”Rosenthal remained inside the investment banking