Bear Stearns' stunning collapse destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars in employee wealth, and those employees are nervously contemplating the future.
The combination rescue-fire sale package of Bear Stearns happened so quickly and involves so much unknowns about its balance sheet, analysts struggled to put its role in the credit crunch into perspective.
China's CITIC Securities said on Saturday it could not guarantee it would complete a deal to invest about $1 billion in Bear Stearns given the U.S. investment bank's financial crisis.
Three days before announcing that Bear Stearns' financial situation had substantially worsenend, chief executive Alan Schwartz told CNBC he is not aware of any imminent threat to the Wall Street investment bank's liquidity.
Bear Stearns' Alan "Ace" Greenberg, a former chief executive who currently serves as chair of its executive committee, told CNBC that the liquidity rumors surrounding the company are "totally ridiculous."