As JPMorgan Chase managers filed into the lobby of Bear Stearns headquarters following the latter bank's near collapse earlier this month, Dartmouth alumni working on the floors above began to question whether their jobs were in jeopardy. They were not alone, as several Dartmouth seniors have accepted job offers from the firm and at least 10 percent of Dartmouth graduates pursue careers in the financial industry, according to the College's Office of Career Services.
Over half of Bear Stearns' 14,000 employees may lose their jobs following JPMorgan's takeover, which was facilitated by a $30 billion pledge from the Federal Reserve, CNBC reported. More senior employees have seen their stock options, saved for retirement, tank, with shares of the company falling from a 2007 high of $170 to $10, as part of the deal engineered with JPMorgan.
Students contacted by The Dartmouth who were offered positions at Bear Stearns declined to comment, citing the delicate nature of the situation.
The bank has advised hired students to send their resums to other companies, although it has not yet rescinded job offers, according to Monica Wilson, assistant director of employer relations at the College.
Graduating seniors typically fill analyst-level positions at Bear Stearns. It is unclear how employees at this level will be affected.
"You tend not to see as much fluctuation in entry-level positions as the economy changes," Wilson said. "The entry-level position is the least costly and the most needed."
While there is "less fluctuation" with entry-level positions, Kent Womack, a professor at the Tuck School of Business, said it is still somewhat of a "flip of the coin" as to whether individual Bear Stearns employees will lose their jobs.
JPMorgan is investigating how its operations overlap with those at Bear Stearns and working to determine where cuts may need to be made, according to Celeste Griffin '07, a first-year fixed-income analyst at Bear Stearns.
JPMorgan declined to address specifically how incoming employees may be affected when contacted by The Dartmouth.
"We're still in early stages of assessing businesses, but we are committed to building a great pipeline of people and intend to keep students updated as much as possible," Brian Marchiony, a JPMorgan spokesperson, said in a statement.
Bear Stearns personnel are actively pursuing other job opportunities to prepare for the worst, some employees, who wished to remain anonymous, said.
"People aren't being criticized for seeking other opportunities," Griffin said, adding that recent events seemed more fitting for discussion in economics 26, a Dartmouth course about markets, than in the real world.
Internships, on the other hand, have generally been unaffected by the current economic conditions, Wilson explained, as many employers have said they are confident that the markets will have recovered by the time students take full-time positions in September 2009. Bear Stearns has cancelled its fall interview date, she said.
Womack argued that in the scheme of things, the Bear Stearns near collapse is "a trickle in the pond" compared to other economic problems of recent months.
"The sub-prime crisis and the looming potential recession dominate the hiring front a lot more than the Bear Stearns problem," he said.
