From the New York Times:

JPMorgan Chase raised its offer for Bear Stearns, the beleaguered investment bank, to $10 a share Monday morning in an effort to pacify angry Bear shareholders.

The sweetened offer of about $1 billion, which was first reported Sunday night, is intended to win over stockholders who vowed to fight the original fire-sale deal.

Under the new terms, JPMorgan would pay $10 a share in stock for Bear, up from its initial $2 a share — a figure that represented a mere one-fifteenth of Bear’s going market price.

Hey, $10 a share as compared to $2 a share? That’s a 500% increase; what a great deal!

Well, not so much. For as “generous” as JPMorgan Chase might seem by raising the price, it still makes hardly a difference for Bear Stearn shareholders. If you had bought 10 shares of Bear Stearns last year at the March 23, 2007 price of $152.97, your holdings would have totaled $1,520.97. If you sold your shares today for $2 per share, you would walk away with $20.97. That’s a loss of $1500.97, or roughly 99% of your initial holdings. If, instead, you sold your shares today for $10 per share, you would walk away with $100.97. That’s a loss of $1,420.97, or roughly 93% of your initial holdings. So JPMorgan Chase quintupling their $2 per share offer only yields a gain of about 6% of the stock’s original value, for a person who bought Bear Stearns stock approximately one year ago.

For those of you who saw a lot of numbers in the last paragraph and just skipped it — which is understandable — the moral of the story is: a lot of people who own Bear Stearns stock are screwed.