CEO Cayne a Burden to Bear

"We're operating in unprecedented market conditions," Molinaro said. But he also implied the firm's ability to assess and manage risk is shaken. "Candidly, we made decisions that in hindsight didn't turn out well," he added.

Bear's precarious position led Punk Zeigel's Bove to slash his earnings estimate for Bear to $7.96 a share from $8.20 per share and trim his 2009 estimate to $8.54 per share from $8.92 per share.

Challenges at Bear's asset management arm are also weighing it down. Barclays Capital(BCS Quote) is suing the firm, accusing Bear, among other things, of being defrauded by the managers of a pair of highly leveraged hedge funds that went bankrupt.

All the bad news surrounding the firm has helped to maul its share value by nearly 50%.

Still, Molinaro said that Bear has taken a number of measures to buffer itself, including reducing head count by 1,400 employees, a 9% reduction. He also said that the company is sufficiently capitalized, even without a $1 billion investment from China's Citic Securities. He noted that Bear's exposure to troubled monoline insurance company ACA Capital is minimal. On Wednesday, the insurer was downgraded to junk status by Standard & Poor's.

Left alone to address analyst questions, Molinaro did his best to placate concerns and underscored that he believed that Bear was well-positioned for the future but worries seemed to abound.

Questioning Cayne's leadership over the past few months has proved a fruitless exercise so far, especially since the CEO has a strong loyalist contingent in and outside the company. There are rumblings, however, that suggest shareholders are becoming somewhat disillusioned.

"I have a lot of clients that would love to see Jimmy Cayne out of there," said Punk Ziegel's Bove.

Answering a question from Bank of America analyst Michael Hecht, Molinaro said that at least the executive management team's relationship with the board of directors was still "very solid and very good".

But how much worse can things get before there's a Cayne mutiny?