He has cost Bear Stearns a bucketful of money and a sizeable portion of its reputation, but the firm is still reluctant to let Ralph Cioffi go.

Cioffi, who headed the two Bear hedge funds that collapsed amid bad bets on subprime-mortgage linked securities this summer, has been trying to put together a new credit hedge fund. But Bear is trying to keep Cioffi—now serving as a consultant to the firm—in the fold, the New York Post reports, dangling his large amount of restricted stock to influence him.

According to the Post, Cioffi had been putting together a $150 million to $250 million distressed credit fund. The tabloid reports that several of his former clients had expressed an interest in investing with him, in spite of the near-total losses of the Bear Stearns High-Grade Structured Credit and High-Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leverage funds.