Out of curiosity I checked out Bear Stearns’ website to see what had happened to it after ‘merging’ with JP Morgan Chase.
As far as I can work out JP Morgan Chase has dumped most of Bear’s content (good move, no doubt) and shoved its website into the old Bear Stearns template.
Above: Bear Stearns today (http://www.bearstearns.com/)
Below: JP Morgan Chase today (http://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/jpmorgan):
So, apart from some random bits of retained content, the only branding remaining from the Bear website is the top left brand name and the Powerpoint-esque primary navigation chevrons.
Above: Bear Stearns primary navigation
Below: PowerPoint’s smart art “Closed chevron process”
What do I make of that integration?
Well, a friend of mine just said: “They’ve got their priorities right. Why spend money on a corporate website?”
Um, er, well, yes, I suppose so. But even though they’ve clearly not spent much money, the Bear homepage is much cleaner now than it was.
Below is Bear Stearns homepage pre-JP Morgan Chase (last March):
