Bear Trap

On a balmy February day in 2007, Bruce Sherman drove to the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort in Naples to attend the Credit Suisse Financial Services Forum.

The annual high-level confab brought together the chiefs of most major U.S. financial institutions for presentations with analysts and investors like Sherman, who at the time was chief executive officer of Naples-based money management firm Private Capital Management.

Sherman went to the Ritz to confront Warren Spector, then co-president and co-chief operating officer of Bear Stearns, the seventh-largest Wall Street investment-banking firm. At the time, Sherman controlled the largest, longest-held block of Bear stock totaling 5.9%. It was a stake valued at just over $1.1 billion.