Billionaire sues Bear

Was H. Roger Wang duped into buying shares of Bear Stearns just before the bank's near collapse? That's among the claims in a Superior Court lawsuit filed on Thursday (and picked up on Tom Petruno's Money & Co.). Wang also claims that Bear illegally liquidated the account that held the stock after Wang and his wife refused to send in unpaid balances on their orders. The suit says that the couple agreed to pay $6.6 million for 150,000 shares at prices between $71.96 and $33.44 a share. The liquidation value of the stock is $947,324, according to the suit. Big difference.

The case, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges fraud and breach of fiduciary duty, and names as defendants Bear Stearns, broker Joey Zhou, and Garrett Bland, a senior managing director in Bear’s Century City office. None of the defendants could be reached for comment Thursday. The 58-year-old Wang, who has a net worth of $1.3 billion by Forbes magazine’s reckoning, grew up in Taiwan and emigrated to the U.S. in 1971. In 1992, early in China’s boom, he founded a real estate development firm called Golden Eagle International in the city of Nanjing. The centerpiece of his empire now is department stores.

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On March 11, according to the suit, Wang went to a lunch meeting at Bear’s Century City office. The suit alleges that Bland told Wang that "Bear Stearns was financially sound, that its stock value should be at least $85 per share, and that now was a great time to invest in the stock." On Friday, March 14, while Bear stock was plummeting from $57 to $30 amid rumors that it might fail, Wang put in an order to buy an additional 200,000 shares, relying in part on Bland’s "favorable recommendations," the suit says. Amid the day’s wild trading, Wang got just 100,000 shares.