Bear Stearns Sold

At a special meeting convened at Bear Stearns' 45-floor octagonal midtown office tower, investors nodded through a sale of the cash-strapped company to its rival JP Morgan at a knockdown price of about $1.4 billion. The meeting was closed to the media but those in the room said Bear's chairman, Jimmy Cayne, told investors he was "personally sorry" for the way the firm had collapsed. The buyout has the backing of the Federal Reserve, which stepped in to guarantee $29 billion of Bear's riskiest assets, fearing that a bankruptcy of the fifth biggest American investment bank would have caused catastrophic reverberations on global markets.