Back-Office Figure Emerges in Bear Stearns Investigation

Securities regulators probing Bear Stearns'(BSC Quote) role in the mutual fund trading scandal are increasingly interested in a back-office manager at the firm's clearing business in determining whether Bear should be the first major Wall Street brokerage to face enforcement action in the investigation.

Regulators are interested in James Delvecchio, the head of operations in Bear's mutual fund clearing unit, because of his intimate view into the trading activity of the hundreds of small brokerages that submitted and cleared their mutual fund trades through Bear, people familiar with the investigation say.

While Delvecchio himself isn't a target of the probe, investigators believe he may have information that could help them decide whether Bear was a bystander to -- or an enabler of -- clients trying to game the fund-pricing system. ...