IMPEACH BUSH

In a shocking deal reached on Sunday to save Bear Stearns, JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay a mere $2 a share to buy all of Bear — less than one-tenth the firm's market price on Friday.

As part of the watershed deal, JPMorgan and the Federal Reserve will guarantee the huge trading obligations of the troubled firm, which was driven to the brink of bankruptcy by what amounted to a run on the bank.

Reflecting Bear's dire straits, JPMorgan agreed to pay only about $270 million in stock for the firm, which had run up big losses on investments linked to mortgages.

JPMorgan is buying Bear, which has 14,000 employees, for a third the price at which the smaller firm went public in 1985. Only a year ago, Bear's shares sold for $170. The sale price includes Bear Stearns's soaring Madison Avenue headquarters.

The agreement ended a day in which bankers and policy makers were racing to complete the takeover agreement before financial markets in Asia opened on Monday, fearing that the financial panic could spread if the 85-year-old investment bank failed to find a buyer.

As the trading day began in Tokyo, however, markets tumbled more than 4 percent. In the United States, investors faced another week of gut-wrenching volatility in American markets.

Despite the sale of Bear, investors fear that others in the industry, like Lehman Brothers, already reeling from losses on mortgage-related investments, could face further blows.

The deal for Bear, done at the behest of the Fed and the Treasury Department, punctuates the stunning downfall of one of Wall Street's biggest and most storied firms. Bear had weathered the vagaries of the markets for 85 years, surviving the Depression and a dozen recessions only to meet its end in the rapidly unfolding credit crisis now afflicting the American economy.

A throwback to a bygone era, Bear Stearns still operated as a cigar-chomping, suspender-wearing culture where taking risks was rewarded. It was a firm that was never considered truly white-shoe, an outsider that defied its mainstream rivals.

When the Federal Reserve helped plan a bailout in 1998 of Long Term Capital Management, the hedge fund, Bear Stearns proudly refused to join the effort. Until recent weeks, Alan "Ace" Greenberg, Bear Stearns's chairman for more than 20 years and a championship bridge player, still regaled its partners over lengthy lunches about gambling with the firm's money in its wood-paneled dining room.

The cut-price deal for Bear Stearns reflects deep misgivings about its future and the enormous obligations that JPMorgan is assuming in guaranteeing the firm's obligations. In an unusual move, the Fed will provide financing for the transaction, including support for as much as $30 billion of Bear Stearns's "less-liquid assets."

Wall Street was stunned by the news on Sunday night. "This is like waking up in summer with snow on the ground," said Ron Geffner, a partner Sadis & Goldberg and a former enforcement lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission. "The price is indicative that there were bigger problems at Bear than clients and the public realized."

The deal followed a weekend of frantic negotiations to save the ailing firm. With the Fed and Treasury Department patched in by conference call from Washington, Bear Stearns executives held the equivalent of a speed-dating auction over the weekend, with prospective bidders holed up in a half dozen conference rooms at its Madison Avenue headquarters. More than 150 JPMorgan employees descended on Bear Stearns to examine the firm's books and trading accounts.

Even as those talks took place, Bear Stearns simultaneously prepared to file for bankruptcy protection in the event a deal could not be struck, underscoring the severity of its troubles.

On Sunday night, Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan, held a conference call with the heads of major American financial companies to alert them to the deal and allay their concerns about doing business with Bear Stearns.

"JPMorgan Chase stands behind Bear Stearns," Mr. Dimon said in a statement. "Bear Stearns's clients and counterparties should feel secure that JPMorgan is guaranteeing Bear Stearns's counterparty risk. We welcome their clients, counterparties and employees to our firm, and we are glad to be their partner." While Bear Stearns toyed with suitors like big private equity firms like the J.C. Flowers & Company, the only meaningful bidder was JPMorgan.

The deal is a major coup for Mr. Dimon, who slept only a handful of hours over the weekend while negotiating with Bear and government officials. Over the last few years, he has focused intensely on cutting costs, improving technology and integrating JPMorgan's disparate operations. But he also has been adamant about preparing the company for an economic downturn.

For JPMorgan, one of the few major banks to emerge relatively unscathed from the subprime crisis, the deal provides a major entry to prime brokerage, which provides financing to hedge funds. While that business has been lucrative in recent years, it has slowed as the financial markets have slumped.

Bear also would give JPMorgan a much bigger presence in the mortgage securities business, which the bank's executives say they are committed in spite of the recent market downturn.

There are, of course, some drawbacks to a deal, even at a bargain-basement price. Mr. Dimon has long expressed doubts that combining two big investment banks is a good idea. Bear's prime brokerage business would require a big technology investment. And there are often severe cultural issues and significant management overlap.

It is unclear how many of Bear Stearns's employees, who together own a third of the company, will remain after the combination. People involved in the talks suggested that as much as a third of the staff could lose their jobs. The deal also raises the prospect that some employees at JPMorgan, which was already considering cutbacks, may face the prospect of additional layoffs as the two firms merge their operations.

With Bear, JPMorgan also inherits a balance sheet that is packed with financial land mines, though the Fed has agreed to protect the firm from a certain amount of liability. Even though JPMorgan has performed well through this recent turbulence, it is unclear if it would want that additional risk.

"Having taken Bear Stearns out of the problem category, and the strong action by the Federal Reserve, we would anticipate the market will behave quite differently on Monday than it was Thursday or Friday," Michael Cavanaugh, JPMorgan's chief financial officer, told analysts during a conference call.

The swiftness of Mr. Dimon's decision to buy Bear is remarkable given that he has not been an aggressive acquirer since he joined the firm after selling it BankOne, where he was chief executive. He has cautioned patience about making acquisitions, though he had suggested in recent months that the firm might be ready to make a major deal.

Earlier this month, the co-chief executive of JPMorgan's investment bank, William T. Winters, said on a conference call with investors: "If a special opportunity came up to acquire a prime broker at a decent return, we wouldn't hesitate. We've always said, ‘Boy, if there was one for sale, we'd love to look at it.' "

A deal needed to be reached quickly to protect the business from collapsing entirely. With most if not all of its clients stopping trading with the firm, its days were numbered.

James E. Cayne, Bear Stearns's former chief executive and one of its largest individual shareholder, will likely walk away with a little more than $13.4 million, the value of his Bear stock holdings, according to James F. Redda & Associates. Those would have been worth $1.2 billion in January 2007, when Bear's stock was trading at a $171.51. Mr. Cayne has taken home more than $232 million in salary, bonus and other pay between 1993 and 2006, the time period for which there is publicly available data, according to Equilar, an executive compensation research firm.

Many hedge funds had started expressing concern about Bear Stearns by late Thursday. Jana Partners, a large hedge fund, for example, sent a memo to its investors that said, "In response to many recent inquiries regarding Bear Stearns, we are writing to inform you that we have no direct exposure to Bear Stearns or its affiliates through a prime brokerage relationship or otherwise."

Not all investors are expected to be pleased with the deal. A conference call with investors and analysts on Sunday night was broken up when a Bear Stearns shareholder sought an explanation of why he would be better off approving this transaction rather than seeing Bear Stearns file for a Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The JPMorgan executives demurred, instead referring the investor to Bear Stearns executives for an explanation. The shareholder declared that he would vote against the deal.

Afterward, Mr. Cavanaugh said JPMorgan felt comfortable in pulling the trigger despite the short due-diligence process. "We've known Bear Stearns for a long time," Mr. Cavanaugh said.