They will continue to seek damages, arguing that the securities firm should be valued at more than $10 a share, a lawyer says. Investors in Bear Stearns Cos. dropped their request for a court order that would stop a proposed buyout by JPMorgan Chase & Co., less than two days before a scheduled hearing in the case.

A Beverly Hills billionaire says the firm, an employee and a broker misled him and his wife into buying stock as the company faltered. Beverly Hills billionaire H. Roger Wang has accused Bear Stearns Cos. of duping him and his wife into buying 150,000 shares of the struggling brokerage's stock -- including 100,000 shares on March 14, the day that federal officials first intervened to keep the firm from tumbling into bankruptcy.

One needs to look no further than the collapse of Bear Stearns to recognize the importance of analytical techniques that can help investors identify companies with aggressive or risky accounting practices. For such advice, we have repeatedly turned to Audit Integrity, a financial analytics company headquartered in Los Angeles. As far back as August of last year, Audit Integrity's analysis of Bear Stearns generated numerous red flags.

In countless ways, the nation's financial system is built on confidence. The irony is that the Federal Reserve's unusual actions - engineering the sale this weekend of Bear Stearns, a series of rate cuts, and tactics not tried since the Depression - didn't seem to reduce fears that the worst

After the collapse of Bear Stearns, some had anticipated a huge drop in the Dow. But the losses so far today are more moderate. It could have been a lot worse.

It aids a fire sale of Bear Stearns at $2 a share, cuts a key rate and broadens lending to investment houses. NEW YORK — The Federal Reserve took extraordinary steps Sunday to bolster investors' shaken confidence, opening a lending window to securities firms, slicing a key interest rate and backing with $30 billion in emergency funds the bargain-basement purchase of ailing Bear Stearns Cos. by rival JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Bear Stearns, squeezed by the sub-prime crisis, needs an emergency loan. Its stock plunges, and wariness grows. The battered global financial system looked a lot more fragile Friday as one of Wall Street's biggest investment houses was forced to get an emergency loan from the Federal Reserve, raising the specter of more giant securities firms laid low by the global credit crisis.

Investors worry the brokerage may not be the last victim of ongoing turmoil. The Dow falls 194 points. News that the Federal Reserve had stepped in to help prop up faltering investment bank Bear Stearns sent a shudder through Wall Street on Friday, slamming stock prices and fanning expectations for a potentially dramatic interest rate cut by the Fed next week.

NEW YORK -- Bear Stearns Cos., one of Wall Street's biggest investment banks, got an emergency loan from the Federal Reserve today to help it stay in business, a dramatic development that threatens to take the global credit crunch to a dangerous new level.

NEW YORK----Fitch rates Bear Stearns ARM Trust, mortgage pass-through certificates 2007-5 as follows: $386,794,150 classes I-A-1, I-A-2, II-A-1, II-A-2, III-A-1, III-A-2, III-X-1, R-I, R-II and R-III 'AAA'; $6,027,000 class B-1 certificates 'AA'; $3,416,000 class B-2 certificates 'A'; $1,407,000 class B-3 certificates 'BBB'.