Company News: Bear Stearns posts first loss in its history
Bear Stearns Cos. said Thursday a bigger-than-expected writedown in its mortgage portfolio caused the nation’s fifth-largest U.S. investment bank to post the first loss in its 84-year history.
It took a $1.9 billion writedown in the quarter ended Nov. 30 as its mortgage-backed securities continued to lose value amid the global credit crisis. That was much larger than the $1.2 billion it expected in November.
Bear Stearns’ fiscal fourth-quarter loss, and collapse of two hedge funds it managed during the summer, prompted chief executive Jimmy Cayne to pass on his 2007 bonus. Members of the company’s executive committee also will not receive year-end bonuses.
Cayne is under pressure like other chief executives on Wall Street, as global banks have written off more than $100 billion in assets this year.
Boeing Co., which has already surpassed a company order record it set last year, added 67 planes to its final order update for 2007, boosting the total as of Tuesday to 1,213.
The latest orders, added Thursday to the online tally the aircraft maker updates every week, included 31 single-aisle 737s ordered by Irish airplane leasing company AWAS; another 31 737s ordered by Australia’s Qantas Airways Ltd.; two widebody 777s ordered by Delta Air Lines; and three midsize 787s going to unidentified customers.
Airbus SAS is expected to finish 2007 ahead of Boeing, having logged 1,204 orders as of the end of November, the latest total available.
Apple Inc. has settled a lawsuit against a Web site that had divulged company secrets, but the site, ThinkSecret.com, will shut down as part of the agreement.
The identity of the sources who leaked the information will not be revealed, according to the settlement announced Thursday at ThinkSecret.com.
The site’s publisher, Harvard student Nick Ciarelli, said in a statement that he was “pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits.”
A California judge last year denied Apple’s bid to force the identification of people who had apparently leaked company information to three other Web sites, ruling that they were entitled to the same protections as traditional journalists under a state law that prevents the forced disclosure of confidential news sources.
The maker of iPods, iPhones and Macintosh computers sued ThinkSecret.com in January 2005 after the site published details about a new bare-bones Mac two weeks before the product was formally launched. Ciarelli started the site in 1998 when he was 13.