Bear On a Tear

Bear Stearns shares surged Monday following a report in The New York Times that J.P. Morgan Chase is nearing an agreement to quintuple the price that it agreed last week to pay for Bear to $10 a share. The move is aimed at mollifying angry Bear shareholders who had threatened to veto the deal, which was engineered in a matter of hours last weekend as Bear Stearns faced a severe liquidity crunch. Other terms of the new deal are expected to be substantially different than the original pact. In particular, the role of the Federal Reserve, which played a critical role in the week-old deal, is expected to change, a person familiar with the situation told The Wall Street Journal.