U.S. Federal Reserve is holding sizable paper losses on real estate assets acquired in the Bear Stearns rescue

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LONDON (MarketWatch) -- The U.S. Federal Reserve is holding sizable paper losses on real estate assets acquired in the Bear Stearns rescue, the Financial Times reported Tuesday. The assets are held in a vehicle known as Maiden Lane I, which was set up to facilitate JPMorgan Chase's /quotes/comstock/13*!jpm/quotes/nls/jpm (JPM 39.28, +0.20, +0.51%) purchase of Bear in March 2008, the newspaper said. The assets were originally valued at $30 billion when a final agreement on the portfolio was reached in June 2008 by the New York Fed and its advisers, the newspaper said. At the end of 2009, the Fed said the assets were worth $27.1 billion. The report said Maiden Lane's losses were concentrated in commercial real estate assets, which had a face value of $8.4 billion and an estimated worth of $7.7 billion when acquired by Fed. They were marked down to $4 billion as of September, according to the report.MarketWatch