Two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers who ran investment vehicles that collapsed and marked the beginning of the financial crisis misled investors to save their multi-million dollar bonuses and reputations, US federal prosecutors claimed on Wednesday.

Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin “saw their successes coming to an end”, Patrick Sinclair, a US federal prosecutor, claimed at the start of the first criminal trial against Wall Street executives to stem from the credit crisis. “They decided to lie ... to buy themselves the time they needed for the down market to come back up again.”