Jimmy Cayne has told the board of Bear Stearns that he plans to step down as chief executive of the Wall Street bank, which has suffered heavy losses in the credit market turmoil. Cayne, 73, hopes to remain as non-executive chairman and hand over the chief executive role to Alan Schwartz, Bear’s president. People close to Cayne, who has been considering retirement for some time, said he decided over the holidays to step down from day-to-day responsibilities for the company he has run for 14 years. An announcement could come as soon as Tuesday. Cayne is the latest casualty of the credit squeeze which has seen the exit of chief executives such as Peter Wuffli at UBS, Chuck Prince at Citigroup and Stan O’Neal at Merrill Lynch. Bear Stearns unveiled Q4 losses of $850m after a $1.9bn writedown of the value of mortgage-related assets.

This entry was posted by Gwen Robinson on Tuesday, January 8th, 2008 at 5:51 and is filed under Capital markets, People. Tagged with bear stearns, Jimmy Cayne. Edit this entry.