JPMorgan agreed to buy Bear Stearns for $2 a share 15 years ago. Pranksters who taped a $2 note to a door at Bear Stears headquarters as a prank remained anonymous. Until now.
The identity of the Watergate scandal informant known as «Deep Throat» that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon remained a mystery for over 30 years. Another secret that has been kept Wall Street speculating for about half of that time has now come to light, according to a «Bloomberg» (behind paywall) story.
Three friends who were roommates at Colombia University and had no connection to Bear Stearns came up with the idea.
Stack of $2 Bills
One of the pranksters, Alex Davidov was given several $2 bills as a bar mitzvah gift and still had them at the time Bear Stearns went under. «We were joking around, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny to tape a $2 bill to the headquarters?» he told Bloomberg via telephone.
Davidov and Andrew McDaniel were joined by Bartek Ringwelski at Bear's headquarters late in the evening on the night JPMorgan announced its offer.
«There were surprisingly not many people around the building,» according to McDaniel. «So we just taped it to the door and took a few pictures ourselves. And then we emailed it to Dealbreaker.» And so the mystery began.
After a shareholder revolt, JPMorgan upped its offer to $10 a share a week later.
They Strike Again
A year later, they were at it again when the stock price of Citigroup fell below $1 a share. Another $2 bill was used, but this time torn in half and taped to the door of its building in mid-town Manhattan.
The three for the most part pursued careers in the tech industry, although Davidov was at Bridgewater Associates for four years, and Ringwelski was an analyst at UBS until 2007 according to the report.
