Beware Bear Stearns White Knight

Bear Stearns (BSC) finds itself with a new shareholder. Currently holding position 369 on Forbes 400 Joseph C Lewis has accumulated approximately 7% of the outstanding shares according to reports filed with the SEC. Shares were purchased between Aug 6 to Sep 4.

If you look at the share price it popped slightly starting Aug 6 but has continued to decline. So with a major buyer absorbing 7%, the stock still tumbled dramatically, which shows you how badly investors wanted to dump. When the news came out, share prices increased 2%, which relatively speaking for Bear Sterns is a pittance.

Bear Stearns could probably better use the capital internally to help rebuild its tattered image and get into some profitable lines of business. Mr. Lewis elected to buy in the secondary market. This is telling. Yes the stock is off tremendously and the currency trader part of him looks at a chart and maybe the dollar signs popped up.

Bear Stearns will need to restructure. Who does not restructure after these kinds of problems? Will Mr. Lewis start advocating for specific changes? Seat on the board? Change management perhaps? His holding company Tavistock Group holds interests in approximately 150 companies according to the New York Times. Could he deliver a huge pipeline of share and debt offerings and create a gravy train of fees?

He has to act like a long term investor and not a trader. There is enough Bear Stock for sale. If as and when it gets better at Bear the knowledge that one single investor wants to off load 7% of the float will cause everyone else to shoot at him.

His long term participation may be perceptually problematic to other investors. It would be better for all involved if Joseph Lewis makes a few comments about his intentions and expectations. Warren Buffet makes comments about his expectations for investments and his style of investing.

The more Joseph Lewis stays quiet the more uncertainty other investors will have. The history is that he made his wealth in currency trading. This is a secretive world that does deal with disclosure issues.