Money | JPMorgan Chase Bear Stearns Staffers Gird for Mass Layoffs After $3B Hit After losing their shirts, half will also lose jobs By Jim O'Neill Posted Mar 26, 2008 7:30 AM CDT Copied The Bear Stearns headquarters, bottom, and the JP Morgan headquarters, top, are shown on Monday, March 24, 2008 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) The Icarus-like fall of Bear Stearns stock, trading as high as $170 a share a year ago before plummeting to $2 last week, has cost Bear employees—who once owned nearly a third of the company—more than $3 billion. That's even after JPMorgan raised its bid for the investment bank to close to $10 a share, reports Reuters. Now the other shoe's about to drop. In addition to losing massive amounts of personal wealth—the stock plunged 88% in less than a month—some 7,000 of the company’s workers are facing layoffs as JPMorgan integrates Bears operations into its own. "It's devastating. I thought I was going to work here my whole life," lamented one Bear staffer. Read These Next 11 people hurt in a "brutal act of violence" in Michigan. We knew Letterman would pipe up about Colbert eventually. A parent's nightmare, in a white cardboard box. Now we know why Ghislaine Maxwell may have opened up to the DOJ. Report an error