Bear Stearns arb selling $100 mln munis: traders

By Anastasija Johnson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Bear Stearns' BSC.N arbitrage program was offering over $100 million of municipal bonds for sale on Friday and there were other sizable sellers, traders said.

Bear Stearns arb, which had not been seen in the muni bond market for some time, was selling on a day when the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) agreed to provide emergency financing for the investment bank after its cash position deteriorated sharply.

Traders said they did not know why the Bear Stearns program was selling. The offering was not very large. A Bear Stearns spokesman could not be reached immediately for comment.

Arbitrage players and hedge funds have been selling billions of dollars of municipal bonds in recent weeks because their leveraged trades went awry as the value of their assets plummeted just when their financing costs shot up.

"I have not seen them for a while" with a bid wanted list, a trader in Chicago said of Bear. "But that doesn't mean they have not sold bonds."

Arbitrage players, known as tender option bond programs, and hedge funds use leverage to profit from the difference between short-term and long-term municipal yields.

The market value of municipal bonds Bear Stearns held in its arbitrage net of offsetting positions was $3.77 billion at the end of November, according to its annual report.

Municipal bonds, which finance public projects such as schools and roads, plummeted in February amid fears that insurers that guarantee interest payments are no longer creditworthy.