Bear Fund Loses Nearly All Its Value

One of two inordinately troubled Bear Stearns mortgage funds appears to have virtually no value remaining."Preliminary estimates show there is effectively no value left for the investors in the [High-Grade Structured] Enhanced Leverage Fund," Bear said in a letter to clients. Meanwhile, the value of the other fund -- the High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund -- has fallen to "less than a 10th of its value from a few months ago after its subprime trades went bad," according to a July 18 article in The Wall Street Journal. Bear Stearns did not directly confirm the extent of the latter decline but did indicate in the letter that the second fund was estimated to have "very little value left." Despite this drastic decline, the High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Fund appears to have "sufficient assets available" to "fully collateralize" a more than $1 billion repurchase facility the firm provided to it last month, Bear said.