Filed under: JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Lehman Br Holdings (LEH), Bear Stearns Cos (BSC)

With this evening’s $2 a share deal for JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) to acquire The Bear Stearns Companies (NYSE: BSC), we are now seeing what Wall Street is really worth. After Friday’s close, for example, Bear Stearns traded for $30 — but this evening’s deal means it’s really worth 93% less.

Does this mean that the next most vulnerable bank, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (NYSE: LEH), which ended last week at $39.26 is really worth $2.75 a share, a 93% discount to its current price? It probably does not make sense to apply exactly the same discount to Lehman Brothers. But, as I posted earlier, there is very little accurate, timely information for investors to use in order to assess whether Lehman is really worth $39.26.

After all, Bear Stearns indicated in its most recent report that its book value was $100 a share and it closed Friday trading at 30% of that value. By contrast, Lehman closed Friday at 98% of its book value of $40 a share. This is a much higher valuation — suggesting that as of Friday’s close, Lehman had yet to experience a run on the bank as did Bear. As long as Lehman customers are not worried about a Bear repeat, they may decide to keep their money right where it is.

But I am wondering whether any company or investor would want to take the chance of seeing whether their money might get tied up in a run on the bank.

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 16th, 2008 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Stocks Money News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.