company town

Who Is Bear Stearns’ Biggest Loser?

FINANCE
• Joseph Lewis, the British billionaire who built up his stake in Bear Stearns last summer, lost about $1.6 billion this past weekend, approximately half of his entire fortune. Bear’s biggest investor, Dallas-based money manager James Barrow, whose firm had a 9.95 percent stake, also lost big — at least $750 million. Activist shareholder Bruce Sherman and departed CEO James Cayne each lost big on their 5 percent stakes, although Cayne might not care so much: He just closed on a $28.24 million Plaza pad and spent late last week playing bridge in a tournament in Detroit. [Bloomberg]
• Meanwhile, Bear’s “fire sale” is spreading like wildfire down the street, singing Lehman Brothers, among other top banks. [DealBook/NYT]
• And Barry Diller’s IAC is “sputtering.” [NYT]

MEDIA
•Rumor has it that Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks will sever ties with Viacom’s Paramount Pictures once the director’s contract is up this fall. [NYP]
Sports Illustrated is launching its Vault, a free site within SI.com that contains everything the magazine has ever published. [NYT]
• Now that Times Square is safer, the New York Times will no longer offer its employees a free shuttle bus to Grand Central and Penn stations. [NYO]

LAW
• Eliot Spitzer’s being disbarred could be an unlikely, but not impossible, outcome to last week’s events. [NYT]
• The lawyer for Ashley “Kristen” Dupré is not happy with the media. He says his client was “thrust into the public glare at age 22 without her consent” and that “some publications, in violation of journalistic norms, have used the occasion of Governor Spitzer’s political misfortunes as an excuse to exploit Ms. Dupré’s persona for commercial purposes.” Did he have to say “thrust”? [Law Blog]
• Law firms are still gender-biased: Most partners are men. [Above the Law]

Who Is Bear Stearns’ Biggest Loser?