'Barclays may sue to recover losses at Bear Stearns' -- MarketWatch

Barclay's was an investor at the now-worthless Bear Stearns' High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund? Well, for Pete's sake. They were also a lender to the fund. A conflict of interest? And they are suing to get their investment back? As a lender, would you expect then to have had more or less information about the status of the fund than the retail investors? This will be interesting to watch.

Also, per a WSJ subscription-only article, Barclays Spars Over Its Losses at Bear Stearns it now seems that some of the investors were not happy with what turned out to be pretty radical levels of leverage employed at the fund, but were trying to juice the returns by borrowing part, perhaps half, of their investment in the fund from a bank. In essence, investing in a hedge fund on margin. I personally just have a hard time working up much sympathy for anyone who would treat their own money with such contempt. How could anybody do that?


Barclays considers options for recovering losses at Bear Stearns - MarketWatch