Brooklyn's Bear Stearns' Employees to 'Jump Ship?'

The mood is "basically one of panic,” one of Bear Stearns' 1,500 MetroTech employees told the Brooklyn Eagle Monday. “I’m young, so I don’t care,” he said. “But many of the older guys who have families, I expect many of them to be jumping ship during the next year or so."

One-tenth of Bear Stearns' employees currently work at MetroTech in Downtown Brooklyn.

Bear Stearns was sold to JPMorgan Chase for $2 a share, in a deal brokered by the Federal Reserve Bank. (Bear shares had been as high as $172.61 a share last year.)

Check out the 47-page Merger Agreement and 5-page Guaranty Agreement, as seen on the Bear Stearns Web site Monday. How in the world did they whip that together so fast?

Many Brooklynites aren't aware that the Brooklyn outpost of Bear Stearns is located at 1 MetroTech Center, in a building it shares with National Grid (once called KeySpan, before that called Brooklyn Union Gas).

There's no telling how long Bear Stearns will stay at 1 MetroTech, though legal considerations (such as a lease with landlord Forest City Ratner Companies) may keep them for a while. (Luckily, JPMorgan Chase is just a hop, skip and a jump away, at 3 MetroTech.)

National Grid is giving up a few choice floors in the same building, and that has KeySpan chief executive Robert Catell, now executive chairman of National Grid USA, a bit miffed.

Catell had "expressed a strong desire" to remain in his spellbindingly impressive 23rd floor office, said to be leased for around $1.1 million a month, according to Newsday.

Probably can't expect Bear Stearns to take over the space.

- Former Bear Stearns’ Offices Seen Staying in Brooklyn Brooklyn Eagle
- National Grid's Catell Says Buh-Bye to His Million-a-Month Brooklyn Office

Photo by MK Metz