ClickAJob News

British-born billionaire Joseph Lewis has bought a seven per cent stake in troubled US investment bank Bear Stearns.

Analysts say that Mr Lewis' purchase of $860.4 million (£424 million) worth of stock has made him the bank's largest single investor.

The purchase of the shares was revealed yesterday in a filing to the US financial watchdog, the securities and exchange commission.

It showed that Mr Lewis bought the stock over the past two months, through his Florida-based investment firm Tavistock.

Mr Lewis, who lives in the Bahamas, is worth an estimated £1.2 billion and was named as the 16th richest person in Britain in this year's Sunday Times rich list.

The reclusive businessman, who made his fortune on the currency markets, has a number of other investments – including a stake in the Tottenham Hotspur football club.

Commentators claim that Mr Lewis' decision to snap up a stake in Bear Stearns provides a major boost to the fortunes of the investment bank, which was one of the first financial groups to admit that it had been hit by the continuing crisis in the US sub-prime mortgage sector.

In June the bank was forced to close two of the hedge funds it had run, as a result of their exposure to rising default levels in the sub-prime sector.

The world's financial markets have been experiencing an ongoing period of volatility as a result of the problems in the US housing market, amid fears that the wider economy could be affected if banks become less willing to lend money to consumers and businesses as a result of exposure to bad debts in the sector.

Commenting on Mr Lewis' share purchase, Chris Whalen, of Institutional Risk Analytics, said: "What the investment shows is that Bear Stearns looks like good value at this level.

"The banks you should be worrying about are the ones who have still to fess up about their exposure to sub-prime," he told the Times newspaper.