Aside from getting an earful from hedge funds such as Paulson & Co. with claims that it manipulated mortgage in the subprime mess, Bear Stearns is grabbling with claims that somehow it has lagged behind other prime broker bigs in its service to hedge funds. "Bear Stearns has missed out on the recent growth in the hedge fund industry and is seeing more attrition because they don’t have the global breadth, balance, sheet or technological savvy of Morgan Stanley or Goldman [Sachs]," Tabb Group senior analyst Adam Sussman told Associated Press. AP supports that assessment by noting that firms such as Citigroup, UBS and Deutsche Bank are raking in large fees by offering hedge funds services and strategic solutions that meets their needs. Bear Stearns, on the other hand, is looking like a Johnny-come-lately in its expansion efforts, and being somewhat smaller than the aforementioned firms, may be at a disadvantage. In other words, it’s the bank that offers a wide variety of services that seems to snag the hedge fund business. For its part, Bear Stearns, says AP, acknowledges past problems but says it has been addressing them, beginning last summer when it reorganized to merge prime brokerage functions in with equities as a way to better service hedge funds. And despite the loss of some key players, such as Richard Lindsey and Leonard Feder, Bear Stearns Bruce Lisman and Steve Meyer, who co-head global equities, wrote in an internal memo obtained by AP that the firm "feel[s] good about the direction of our prime brokerage business." In fact, late last week, Bear Stearns announced it was beefing up its commodities business to meet growing demand of hedge funds in this sector with the hiring of Sid Strutt from Sempras Metal Group to join its metals desk next month as well as Jon Browning of Barclays Capital who will come aboard in September.