Going Down in Spades

While Bear Stearns was burning, Jimmy Cayne, the Wall Street firm's chief executive, was playing bridge.

The 74-year-old banker, a world-class bridge player, came under heavy fire from shareholders for spending much of last July at a tournament in Nashville or playing golf. At the time two Bear Stearns hedge funds were in crisis and eventually collapsed.

Cayne insisted that he had remained in control of the bank throughout but in January announced that he would step aside, although he remains chairman. His one time protege, Warren Spector, who had also been at the bridge tournament, was ousted in August.

A one-time scrap iron salesman, Cayne joined Bear Stearns in 1969 and became one of the firm's top brokers. He succeeded Alan Greenberg as chief executive in 1993 and reshaped Bear Stearns from a brokerage to fully fledged merchant bank.

After the firm wrote off $1.9bn (£0.9bn) in losses relating to the meltdown in the home loans industry, Cayne and other members of the management said they would forgo their bonuses. Still, Cayne, who took home £34m in pay in 2006, is unlikely to be impoverished.