Portable Planet

The Bear Stearns Companies Inc. announced today that it has offered to provide up to $3.2 billion in secured financing to The Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit Fund (High-Grade Fund), a hedge fund managed by Bear Stearns Asset Management (BSAM). The Bear Stearns facility, which is in the form of a collateralized repurchase agreement, will enable the Fund to replace current secured financing, improve the Fund’s liquidity and facilitate an orderly de-leveraging of the Fund in the marketplace.

Over the past few weeks, the High-Grade Fund and The Bear Stearns High Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leveraged Fund (Enhanced Fund) have experienced high levels of margin calls and have had difficulty in creating necessary liquidity and working capital to continue to operate the Funds. BSAM will continue to work with creditors and counterparties of the Enhanced Fund to reduce leverage in an orderly manner and improve liquidity.

Rich Marin, Chief Executive Officer of BSAM said, “We are working with counterparties to stabilize the situation by reducing the Funds’ leverage and improving the liquidity. Our goal is to achieve the best possible results for the Funds’ investors under the circumstances and our efforts and our discussions with counterparties are ongoing.”

James E. Cayne, chairman and chief executive officer of The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. commented that, “The uncertainty in the marketplace surrounding these Funds has made an orderly de-leveraging difficult. By providing the facility we believe we will stabilize financing, reduce uncertainty in the marketplace and allow for an orderly process to de-leverage the High Grade Fund.”

The conference call will be led by Sam Molinaro, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and will be held at 12:30 p.m., (ET) on June 22, 2007. Those wishing to listen to the call should dial toll-free (or for international callers) at least 10 minutes prior to the start of the call to ensure connection to the conference. The conference call will also be accessible through the firm’s Web site at www.bearstearns.com.

Source: Bear Stearns