"The name 'Bear Stearns' is enough to send a shudder down the spine of any investor who survived the financial crisis.
The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 is generally regarded as the moment when the entire financial system almost came crashing down. But it is often forgotten that the glue that held it together had started to come unstuck more than a year earlier.
The first sign that things were unravelling was when American investment bank Bear Stearns prevented investors taking money out of two mortgage-related hedge funds in the summer of 2007. Eventually, both were liquidated.
At the time, the move seemed largely inconsequential to the wider world but within weeks BNP Paribas had taken similar action over three funds holding American mortgage-backed securities.
The events effectively meant the financial markets' pricing system was broken, and as a result markets went into freefall."
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